TikTok sues Montana over law that bans app

TikTok sued Montana’s attorney general on Monday over a new law that would ban the app statewide as of next year, contending it is unconstitutional.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) last week signed the first-in-the-nation law, which will bar TikTok from operating in the state and prohibit app stores from making it available to download there as of Jan. 1, 2024.

In a 62-page complaint filed in Montana’s federal district court, TikTok said the law violates the company’s First Amendment rights, intrudes upon federal authority and unlawfully singles out the company.

“Through TikTok, Plaintiff exercises its constitutionally protected editorial judgment on whether, and how, to host, disseminate, and promote third-party speech created by others, and also shares its own content with users in Montana about a variety of issues and current events,” the complaint states. 

“The TikTok Ban, however, effects a prior restraint on the speech of Plaintiff and other TikTok users, unconstitutionally shutting down the forum for speech for all speakers on the app and singling these speakers out for disfavored treatment with the content-based rationale that videos on TikTok are harmful to minors,” it continues.

The bill cited TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and raised concerns about the Chinese government’s ability to access data given that ByteDance is based in the country.

The suit calls those arguments “nothing more than unfounded speculation,” maintaining the company’s long insistence that it is independent of Chinese government and not subject to any data requests.

But the legislation added to national security concerns raised by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle about TikTok. A number of states have banned the app on government devices, but Montana is the first state to pass a bill that outright bans the platform statewide.

TikTok’s lawsuit further argues Montana’s legislation is preempted by federal law.

“The TikTok Ban is based on the State’s purported concern about the security of U.S. user data vis-à-vis the Chinese government,” the lawsuit states. “But foreign affairs and national security are matters over which the U.S. Constitution vests exclusive authority in the federal government, not the States. Indeed, Congress has created a specific federal regulatory process by which the purported national security concerns that have animated this legislation may be addressed.”

Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R), said they expected legal challenges, and the state is prepared to defend the law.

“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,” Flower said in a statement.

This story was updated at 5:14 p.m.