Obvious: TikTok Files Lawsuit Against Government Over Ban Law

TikTok has officially filed a lawsuit against the US government in a bid to put the brakes on the TikTok ban law.

Last month, we reported on US President, Joe Biden, signing into law the TikTok ban bill. The effort has been billed as blatantly unconstitutional by legal experts and TikTok itself. The development got Canadian media to run up to Canada’s Prime Minister and pressure him into following suit. We haven’t heard anything since that initial lobbying effort, though it wouldn’t be a surprise if the efforts are much more low key than blasting it across the media outlets home pages.

While media companies were spreading rumours about TikTok moving forward with divesting their US assets, TikTok denied those reports, saying that between divesting their assets and getting banned in the US, they would choose getting banned altogether (a pretty understandable response especially since the matter has yet to be tested in court).

With the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of content creators potentially hanging in the balance along with tens of billions in economic contributions, it seemed that the next step in this saga is going to be obvious: a lawsuit from TikTok. Whether you are for or against this assault on free speech, the next step was pretty obvious in this story. Early reports are saying that such a lawsuit was filed. From NBC News:

TikTok is suing the United States government in an effort to stop enforcement of a bill passed last month that seeks to force the app’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argues that the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates constitutional protections of free speech.

The suit calls the law an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment.

“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” TikTok wrote in the lawsuit, “and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”

The company argues that invoking national security concerns is not a sufficient reason for restricting free speech, and that the burden is on the federal government to prove that this restriction is warranted. It has not met that burden, the lawsuit stated.

So, it seems that TikTok has followed through in filing the lawsuit. The next question at this point is whether or not the court in question will agree to hear the case. TikTok is a big company in the first place with plenty of backing, so it is likely that the company consulted with very well paid legal council. So, in all likelihood, the petition is at least written by a legal team who feel that they can get TikTok their day in court.

The other thing to in all of this whether or not there will ultimately be success in blocking such a law. It wouldn’t be surprising if the court challenge makes it all the way to the Supreme Court which, unfortunately, is packed with activist judges these days who have a history of letting personal opinion rule the day over the rule of law. Roe v Wade being overturned is a really good example of this. So, hard to say at this point what will happen on that front. Still, the first step is getting this to trial.

Another question some might have is whether or not a legal challenge would mean a delay in enforcing the TikTok ban. That remains to be seen. In theory, an injunction against enforcement of the law while the challenge is being heard is entirely possible. Still, this is several steps down the road. Again, we are in the very early stages and a court challenge can take years to sort out. After all, more often then not, the justice system is a slow process.

At any rate, the challenge was entirely predictable and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. TikTok said that they were going to challenge this law, they had many motivating factors to challenge this law, and they followed through by petitioning the court. The only surprise for me here is that anyone following this closely would find this surprising. We’ll keep an eye out for how this all develops thanks to there being a considerable amount at stake in all of this.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.

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