On March 12, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington, the United States, TikTok creators gathered in front of a press conference to express their opposition to the “Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act”, which is waiting to be passed by the House of Representatives to crack down on TikTok legislation.
Craig Hudson | Reuters
TikTok is suing the U.S. government in an attempt to block its enforcement a bill passed in april Aiming to force the app’s Chinese owners to sell the app or ban it.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argued that the bill, the Apps Protecting Americans from Control by Foreign Adversaries Act, violated constitutional protections of free speech.
The lawsuit calls the law an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment.
“For the first time ever, Congress has enacted a law imposing a permanent, nationwide ban on a single, designated speech platform and barring every American from participating in a unique online community,” TikTok wrote in the lawsuit. The community has more than 1 billion people worldwide.
The company argued that citing national security concerns was not a sufficient reason to restrict free speech and that the federal government had the burden of justifying such restrictions. It failed to meet that burden, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, which has been expected since President Joe Biden signed the bill last month, is expected to further extend an already long timeline for the app to potentially be banned or sold. ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, has had more than a year to take action.Legal proceedings will now put that timetable on hold, meaning Ban could take years to take effect.
The lawsuit says Congress has provided no evidence that TikTok poses the type of data security risk or foreign propaganda dissemination that “reasonably justifies” the law, or that the app has caused any specific harm in those areas.
“During the hasty, closed-door legislative process that preceded the bill’s enactment, statements from congressional committees and individual members of Congress confirmed what was, at best, speculation rather than the ‘evidence’ required by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit states.
TikTok further claims that the law violates due process rights under the Fifth Amendment and is an unconstitutional bill of disenfranchisement, or a legislative act that declares a party guilty and punishes them without a trial.
“Congress has never before enacted a two-tier speech regime, with one set of rules applying to a designated platform and another set of rules applying to everyone else,” it said in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also states that the law is a de facto ban on TikTok and that ByteDance’s divestiture option is “illusive” because it is commercially, technically, or legally impossible, especially under the 270-year limit imposed by the law. within days.
“According to its sponsors, the bill is not an injunction because it provides ByteDance with a choice: divest TikTok of its U.S. operations or be shut down. But in reality, there is no alternative,” the lawsuit states.
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