Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed the unprecedented ban on May 17.
San Francisco:
TikTok filed suit in U.S. federal court on Monday to prevent the state of Montana from enacting a blanket ban on the video-sharing app.
The unprecedented ban, which will take effect in 2024, violates the constitutionally protected right to free speech, TikTok argued in the lawsuit.
“We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an extremely strong set of precedents and facts,” a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed the unprecedented ban on May 17.
Gianforte said on Twitter that he endorsed the ban to “protect Montanans’ personal and private information from the Chinese Communist Party.”
“The state has taken these extraordinary and unprecedented measures based on nothing more than baseless speculation,” TikTok argued in its lawsuit.
Five TikTok users filed a lawsuit last week calling on a federal court to overturn Montana’s ban on the app, arguing it violates their right to free speech.
The state is attempting to exercise national security powers that only the federal government can exercise, violating free speech in the process, allege both lawsuits filed against Montana.
TikTok called on federal court to declare Montana’s ban on its app unconstitutional and bar the state from ever putting it into effect.
“Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting on TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes,” the lawsuit filed by TikTok users states.
Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the app has been accused by a large number of US politicians of being under the tutelage of the Chinese government and being a Beijing espionage tool, something the company furiously denies.
Montana became the first US state to ban TikTok, with the law due to take effect next year as debate escalates over the impact and safety of the popular video app.
The ban will serve as a legal test for a national ban on the platform, something Washington lawmakers are increasingly calling for.
The Montana ban makes it a violation any time “a user opens TikTok, is given the option to access TikTok, or is given the option to download TikTok.”
Any violation is punishable by a fine of $10,000 per day.
Under the law, Apple and Google will have to remove TikTok from their app stores and companies may face daily fines.
The ban will take effect in 2024, but would expire if TikTok is acquired by a company founded in a country not designated by the United States as a foreign adversary, the law reads.
The law is the latest skirmish between TikTok and many Western governments, with the app already banned on government devices in the United States, Canada and several countries in Europe.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
