TikTok has promised to sue over the potential US ban. What's the legal outlook?

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Patrick Toomey News

Tiktok,First Amendment Rights,American Civil Liberties Union

NEW YORK (AP) — Legislation forcing TikTok's parent company to sell the video-sharing platform or face a ban in the U.S. received President Joe Biden's...

official signoffargue it violates TikTok users' First Amendment rights. The app's China-based owner, ByteDance, has already promised to sue, calling the measure unconstitutional.

Among key questions will be whether the legislation interferes with the overall content of speech on TikTok, notes Elettra Bietti, an assistant professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, because content-based restrictions meet a higher level of scrutiny.ByteDance has yet to officially file a lawsuit, but Bietti said she expects the company's challenge to primarily focus on whether a ban infringes on these wider free-speech rights.

Toomey maintains that the government hasn't met the high bar required to prove imminent national-security risks, but some other legal experts note that it's still a strong card to play. “Personally, I believe that what TikTok does isn’t that different from other companies that are U.S.-based,” Bietti said, pointing to tech giants ranging from Google to Amazon. “The question is, ‘Why ban TikTok and not the activities and the surveillance carried out by other companies in the United States?’”Still, legal experts note that there could be repercussions beyond TikTok in the future.

In the summer of 2019, only hours after an Iranian rocket accidentally exploded at one of Iran's own launch sites, senior U.S. officials met with then-President Donald Trump and shared a sharply detailed, highly classified image of the blast's catastrophic aftermath. Worried that the image becoming public could hurt national security efforts, intelligence officials urged Trump to hold off until more knowledgeable experts were able to weigh in, the sources said.

 

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