TikTok sued the federal government Tuesday in a bid to block a new law that will force its China-based parent company to sell the popular video-sharing app within the next year or face a total ban in the US.
Filed in a federal appeals court in Washington DC, the lawsuit seeks a court order to block implementation of the bipartisan legislation – which President Biden signed into law last month after it rapidly progressed through Congress.
TikTok argued the law, dubbed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is “unconstitutional” and that divesture within its 12-month timeline is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
“There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere,” the lawsuit says.
TikTok asked the court to find that the law “violates the US Constitution” as well as to grant “any further relief that may be appropriate.”
A White House representative referred questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment on the suit.
Representatives for the House Select Committee on China, which championed the bill, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The law requires parent company ByteDance to divest its stake in TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025, or one day before President Biden’s term expires. Biden has the option to extend that window by three months if he decides a deal is making sufficient progress.
Tuesday’s legal filing is expected to pause that timeline and push back a possible ban by several years, according to NBC News.
“The Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States,” the lawsuit says.
TikTok further claimed that moving its source code to the US would “take years” and require an “entirely new set of engineers to gain sufficient familiarity with the source code to perform the ongoing, necessary maintenance and development activities for the platform.”
TikTok’s chances in the lawsuit may come down to the extent of the national security concerns that led Congress to pass the law in the first place, according to Gautam Hans, associate clinical professor of law and associate director of the First Amendment Clinic at Cornell University
“I think TikTok has a strong shot, given that the law has some First Amendment problems,” Hans said. “The issue is whether the purported national security concerns will actually be sufficiently specific and concrete to persuade a judge that the law is constitutional.”
Critics have alleged that TikTok essentially functions as a weapon for the Chinese Communist Party that has facilitated everything from election interference to pro-terrorist propaganda and a teen mental health crisis. They have also raised alarms that China could exploit TikTok for backdoor access to the personal data of US users.
TikTok has denied all the claims and touted its efforts to build a safe and secure platform – including a partnership with tech giant Oracle to store user data on US-based servers.
Nevertheless, TikTok’s critics are adamant that the app poses a grave threat to US national security.
Jacob Helberg, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission who played a key role in marshalling support for the law in Washington, described TikTok’s lawsuit as “unserious.”
“TikTok’s argument goes against over 100 years of legal precedent,” Helberg said in a statement. “It also once again fails to address the central national security question at hand: Bytedance does the bidding of the CCP. TikTok’s ties to the CCP are no longer hypothetical, but are a well-documented pattern corroborated by dozens of company leaks, former executives and whistleblowers.”
Calls for a US ban reignited last year after data showed pro-Palestinian content appeared to have a far wider reach on TikTok than pro-Israel content.
Lawmakers were also alarmed after the emergence of a TikTok trend in which users shared videos supporting 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America,” which was riddled with terrorist rhetoric and antisemitism.
In March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) concluded that the Chinese Communist Party has used the app to influence US elections.
Intelligence officials said TikTok has played a role in “malign influence operations,” with “accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022.”
The divestiture bill became law despite a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign by TikTok, which repeatedly touted its huge American user base and benefits to the US economy in its unsuccessful attempt to stave off its passage.
The company commissioned an economic impact study which found that TikTok “contributed $24.2 billion to the US economy in 2023” through its work with small and medium-sized businesses.
The possibility of a forced sale of TikTok has attracted a number of suitors, included ex-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former Activision-Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick.
As The Post reported, Mnuchin has been pitching potential investors on a plan to buy the TikTok brand and rebuild its recommendation algorithm within the US with the help of a firm with artificial intelligence expertise. Doing so could allow Mnuchin or another buyer to bypass China’s strict technology export laws.
