TikTok sues US to block law that could ban the social media platform

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are suing the US over a law that would ban the popular video-sharing app unless it's sold to another company, arguing that it relies on vaguely painting 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 US 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 DC.

"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."

TikTok and ByteDance argued in the lawsuit that it isn't being given a choice.

"The 'qualified divestiture' demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally," they said.

"There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit argues that it would be impossible for ByteDance to divest its US TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the United States. A US-only TikTok, the suit says, would operate as an island that's detached from the rest of the world.

TikTok also paints divestment as a technological impossibility, since the law requires all of TikTok's millions of lines of software code to be wrested from ByteDance so that there is no "operational relationship" between the Chinese company and the new US app.

"Specifically, to comply with the law's divestiture requirement, that code base would have to be moved to a large, alternative team of engineers — a team that does not exist and would have no understanding of the complex code necessary to run the platform," the lawsuit says.

The parties argued that they should be protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. They are seeking a declaratory judgment that the Act violates the US Constitution; an order enjoining Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing the Act and any further relief that the court may deem appropriate.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit Tuesday. And White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to engage on questions about why the president continues to use TikTok for his political activities, deferring to the campaign.

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