(The Hill) — TikTok sued to block the law that would force the application to be divested from its Chinese-based parent company ByteDance or be banned from the U.S.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the U.S. government, TikTok and ByteDance argued that the law, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversaries Act, violates the First Amendment.
The law gives ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to a new company that will be allowed to operate it in the U.S. or else the app will be banned from American networks and online application stores. The president can give ByteDance an additional 90 days to sell TikTok if he determines it necessary.
But TikTok argued that “qualified divestiture” is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally,” and therefore would lead to a shutdown of the app in the U.S., cutting off millions of daily users.
