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TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance said on Tuesday that they had filed a lawsuit against the US government challenging a law that would force a sale or ban of the app.
Last month, Washington passed legislation requiring TikTok to divest from its parent by January 19 2025 or face a countrywide ban, citing concerns that the Chinese Communist party could wield data on the app’s 170mn US users for espionage purposes, or proliferate propaganda via the platform.
In a petition, filed with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and posted on its website, TikTok claimed that the law was unconstitutional, breaching First Amendment free speech rights. It also argued that Congress had “enacted these extreme measures without a single legislative finding”, and that the act would constitute “unlawful taking of private property”.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden, has aggravated US-China tensions, and the lawsuit is the first step in a legal battle that is likely to decide TikTok’s fate in the US and could make its way to the Supreme Court.
In the filing, TikTok said a sale would be “simply not possible” as a standalone US app was not commercially or technologically viable, particularly within the 270-day timeline stipulated by the law. It also noted that Beijing had publicly said it would not allow ByteDance to divest TikTok’s recommendations algorithm and has enacted export control laws that would block such a spin-off.
“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 1bn people worldwide,” the petition said.
Congress moved with unusual speed to pass the TikTok legislation, particularly after its members received classified briefings from security officials raising national security concerns. The bill passed despite aggressive lobbying efforts by TikTok, which galvanised its own users and creators to come out in favour of the app.
TikTok said in the petition that it had invested $2bn in “Project Texas”, its corporate restructuring plan to protect US user data from Chinese influence through a partnership with Oracle. It had also made “extraordinary, additional commitments” in a 90-page draft security agreement developed with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
However, it said that Cfius had stopped meaningfully engaging with the platform in August 2022, while “Congress tossed this tailored agreement aside, in favour of the politically expedient and punitive approach”.
TikTok successfully sued the US government in 2020 when then-president Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban the app, giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had collected in the country.
Republican congressman John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the strategic competition between the US and Chinese Communist party, said in a statement that he was “confident” that the legislation would be upheld.
“Congress and the executive branch have concluded, based on both publicly available and classified information, that TikTok poses a grave risk to national security and the American people. It is telling that TikTok would rather spend its time, money and effort fighting in court than solving the problem by breaking up with the CCP,” he added.
