In U.S. federal court, TikTok parent company ByteDance, a Chinese firm, sued over a statute signed by President Joe Biden that requires the divestiture of the company, or else it will be blocked—igniting legal warfare.
The companies filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing that the law violates the U.S. Constitution, particularly the First Amendment regarding free speech. The law gives ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban.
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban.” They really drove home the fact that divesting TikTok by the deadline was off the table and that the law would practically close the platform, putting its 170 million American users in limbo.
The Biden administration’s efforts to allay national security concerns about Chinese ownership may have inspired this, but TikTok asserts that an outright ban is not the solution. TikTok filed the latest lawsuit in a series to thwart attempts to shut it out of the US market.
The legal battle also reflects deeper underlying frictions between the U.S. and China when it comes to technology and internet governance. Despite TikTok’s efforts to sweet-talk the security concerns and negotiate certain agreements with the authorities, it was never capable of sidestepping the future-related barriers in the United States.