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WASHINGTON, DC: An American judge in Washington late on Sunday (September 27) temporarily blocked an order from the Trump administration prohibiting Apple and Google from offering the Chinese-owned short video sharing app TikTok for download at 11:59 a.m. Sunday pm local time. .
Federal District Judge Carl Nichols, nominated by President Donald Trump, who joined the court last year, said in a short order that he was issuing a preliminary injunction to prevent the TikTok app store ban from entering. validity.
Nichols refused “at this time” to block other Commerce Department restrictions that go into effect on November 12 and that TikTok warned would have the impact of rendering the app unusable in the United States.
The opinion was sealed, so the Washington DC court did not disclose the reason for the decision in a short order. The judge can open parts of the order after consulting with attorneys on both sides.
The decision represents a temporary victory for TikTok, which has 100 million US users. But the court has yet to consider the merits of legal arguments about whether the social platform should remain available to Americans.
TikTok has argued that even a temporary ban would be devastating and cause irreparable harm to the company by slowing its growth and damaging its business reputation.
“We are pleased that the court accepted our legal arguments and issued a court order,” TikTok said in a statement.
“We will continue to defend our rights for the benefit of our community and employees.”
For the injunction, Nichols heard arguments about free speech and the national security implications of Trump’s ban on the Chinese-owned app in a rare Sunday phone hearing.
READ: Would using TikTok really have national security implications?
John E Hall, a lawyer for TikTok, had argued during the 90-minute hearing that the ban was “unprecedented” and “irrational.”
“How does it make sense to enforce this app store ban tonight when there are ongoing negotiations that could make it unnecessary?” Hall said during the hearing.
“This is just punitive. This is just a blunt way of hitting the company … There is simply no urgency here.”
Government lawyers argued that the president has the right to take national security measures and said the ban was necessary due to TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government through its parent company ByteDance.
A government report called ByteDance “a spokesperson” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and said it was “committed to promoting the CCP’s agenda and messages.”
Following the judge’s order, the Commerce Department said in a statement that it would comply with the injunction but that it “intends to vigorously defend the (executive order) … from legal challenges.”
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE INTERNET
An amicus brief filed by Netchoice, a trade group that includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, said that a ban could have important implications for the global Internet.
“The government’s actions are unprecedented in scope,” the group said in its presentation.
A ban “would also create a dangerous precedent” for the open Internet, the report said.
“The ban on any use of the TikTok code by American developers for any purpose is effectively a ban on the building blocks of free digital expression.”
The trade group said that China or other countries may cite a TikTok ban “as justification for banning or restricting the activities of US internet companies, including US-based social media platforms.”
READ: Comment – Are the best days of Big Tech over?
US officials have raised national security concerns that the CCP government may obtain the personal data collected on 100 million Americans who use the app.
ByteDance said on Sept. 20 that it made a preliminary agreement for Walmart and Oracle to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, which would oversee operations in the United States. Negotiations continue on the terms of the agreement and to resolve the concerns of Washington and Beijing.
The agreement has yet to be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) of the US government.
The Justice Department said that a preliminary injunction allowing Americans to continue downloading the TikTok app would be “interfering with a formal national security judgment of the president; altering the landscape regarding the ongoing CFIUS negotiations; and continuing to allow sensitive and valuable user information flows to ByteDance regarding all new users. “
On September 19, the Commerce Department delayed the ban to give companies an extra week to finalize a deal.
TikTok argues that the restrictions, amid mounting tensions between the United States and China under the Trump administration, “were not motivated by genuine national security concerns, but rather by political considerations related to the upcoming general election.”
Another US judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday rejected an offer from three TikTok content creators to block the ban, while a California judge has blocked a similar order from taking effect on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat app.
