TikTok to challenge US forced sale in court citing constitutional concerns

TikTok will begin making its case in a U.S. court on Monday (September 16) over a law to force the app’s sale. Attorneys for ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, will argue that the legislation is unconstitutional after U.S. President Joe Biden signed the measure into law in April. The regulation was brought in after concerns that U.S. citizens’ data was vulnerable to exploitation by China’s government.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the claims, calling it “basic misinformation.” ByteDance filed a 70-page appeal within a week after the Senate passed the bill, asking a U.S. court to review whether the law violates any Constitutional rights of Americans.

In the filing, the platform stated: “Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership.”

The company claimed that by closing down the app, Congress would be “[circumventing] the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down.” They add that this would “be fundamentally at odds with the Constitution’s commitment to both free speech and individual liberty.”

According to the Pew Research Centre, the social media video network is used by around 170 million Americans, with a third of U.S. adults using the platform.

The appeal argues that TikTok would be forced to close down by January 19, 2025, “silencing the Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”

TikTok in court over user data and security issues

In July, the Justice Department claimed that TikTok and ByteDance collected bulk data on sensitive topics such as abortion and gun control, and sent it to China. The information was reportedly collected through an internal communication tool called Lark.

“This resulted in certain sensitive U.S. person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China,” the DoJ added.

TikTok devices have already been banned on government devices in a handful of countries in Europe and the United Kingdom. In April, ReadWrite compiled a list of countries that have imposed a TikTok ban and the reasons behind the limitations. A complete ban was enacted in Nepal, Somalia, and India, citing security issues and disrupting “social harmony.”

ReadWrite has reached out to TikTok and the U.S. Justice Department for comment.

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