Tik Tok Sues to Prevent U.S. Ban of the App

TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have filed a complaint against the Trump Administration in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuit seeks to prevent the U.S. government from banning TikTok, a popular mobile app, without affording its owners “due process of law.” The complaint argues that the ban was issued “for political reasons rather than because of an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the United States.”

On August 6, 2020, President Trump issued an executive order using his authority under IEEPA to bar any transactions with two Chinese-owned social media apps, TikTok and WeChat, within the United States. The complaint disputes the national security concerns expressed by the Trump administration and claims that the company has taken “extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s U.S. user data.”

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