TIKTOK SUES US TO BLOCK LAW THAT COULD BAN THE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are suing the U.S. over a law that would ban the popular video-sharing app unless it's sold to another company, arguing that it vaguely paints it as a threat to national security to get around the First Amendment.

The widely expected lawsuit filed on Tuesday may be setting up what will likely be a protracted legal fight over TikTok's future in the United States and could end up before the Supreme Court. If TikTok loses, it says it will be forced to shut down next year.

The popular social video company says that the law, which President Joe Biden signed as part of a larger $95 billion foreign aid package, is so “obviously unconstitutional” that the sponsors of the measure are trying to portray it not as a ban, but as a regulation of TikTok’s ownership. It’s the first time the U.S. government has singled out a social media company with a potential ban, which free speech advocates note is more common in repressive regimes such as Iran or China.

“Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok: a vibrant online forum for protected speech and expression used by 170 million Americans to create, share, and view videos over the Internet,” ByteDance said in its suit, filed in a federal appeals court in Washington D.C. “For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”

The law requires TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, to sell the platform within nine months. If a sale is already in progress, the company will get another three months to complete the deal. ByteDance has said it “doesn’t have any plan to sell TikTok.” But even if it wanted to divest, the company would have to get a blessing from Beijing. According to the lawsuit, the Chinese government has “made clear” that it would not permit ByteDance to divest the recommendation engine that is “key to the success of TikTok in the United States.”