TikTok filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to block a new law requiring either the sale of the app by its Chinese parent company or its removal from app stores and web-hosting services. About two weeks ago, President Joe Biden signed the bill, which had passed both legislative chambers with broad bipartisan support.
In a filing with a federal appeals court in Washington, TikTok challenges the constitutionality of the new law on the grounds that the U.S. government infringed the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its hundreds of millions of users over national security concerns.
The new law sets the initial deadline for a TikTok sale by January 2025, and President Biden can decide to extend the deadline by another three months to allow the deal to be completed.
Lawmakers supporting the new law argued that it was not a ban but a divestiture aimed at preventing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from accessing American consumer data and the algorithm owned by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, from potentially influencing Americans.
However, the company has maintained that it has not and will not share American user data with the CCP. According to China’s counterespionage law, ByteDance must hand over data on American users if requested.
Hellbound and Down 