The social media company TikTok sued the state of Montana in federal court Monday, claiming that a state law banning the app violated its freedom of speech.
Montana passed last week the first statewide bill banning the Chinese-owned media platform, most popular for short-form videos, within its borders.
The law, which will take effect in January, would penalize anyone using or assisting in the use of TikTok in Montana with a $10,000 fine.
The state has said it will not enforce the law against individual users but only on the tech companies.
Montana officials have said the law will protect the private data and personal information of its residents from China’s communist government.
But the company claims the state is running afoul of federal law and the U.S. Constitution. It asked the court to halt any enforcement of the law while the case is being litigated on the merits.
“The State has enacted these extraordinary and unprecedented measures based on nothing more than unfounded speculation. Specifically, the State claims that the government of the People’s Republic of China (’China’) could access data about TikTok users, and that TikTok exposes minors to harmful online content. Yet the State cites nothing to support these allegations,” the 62-page complaint read.
TikTok claims the law infringes on not only its First Amendment rights, but those of the more than 150 million Americans that it estimates use the platform each month.
“This unprecedented and extreme step of banning a major platform for First Amendment speech, based on unfounded speculation about potential foreign government access to user data and the content of the speech, is flatly inconsistent with the Constitution,” the lawsuit read.
The lawyers for the platform also say the ban runs foul of federal law, since national security is a federal concern, not one for an individual state, and that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause since a state can’t interfere with commerce outside its borders.
Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, said in a statement that state officials “expected legal challenges and are fully prepared to defend the law that helps protect Montanans’ privacy and security.”
Within 24 hours of the law’s having passed, five Montana TikTok users filed a lawsuit in federal court in Missoula making similar claims — that the law violates their free-speech rights and that the state doesn’t have authority over matters of national security.
TikTok launched in 2017 and became available in the United States in 2018. It has about 7,000 U.S. employees and is currently not available in China, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint says TikTok is owned by ByteDance Ltd., a private company, and is 60% owned by global investors.
But Ms. Flower, the Montana spokeswoman, also denied TikTok’s claims of independence from the Chinese government.
“The Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok as a tool to spy on Americans by collecting personal information, keystrokes, and even the locations of its users – and by extension, people without TikTok who affiliate with users may have information about themselves shared without evening knowing it,” she said.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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