TikTok Sues U.S. Government Over Law That Would Ban App, Alleges It’s ‘Obviously Unconstitutional’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor As expected, TikTok filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the U.S.’s new law that would force parent company ByteDance to sell the app — or face a nationwide ban.

TikTok filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “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,” the company said in the suit. “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.” TikTok’s lawsuit argues that the law — the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — is unconstitutional. “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.

According to its sponsors, the Act responds to TikTok’s ultimate ownership by ByteDance Ltd., a company with Chinese subsidiaries whose employees support various ByteDance businesses, including TikTok.