TikTok on Monday announced that it has filed a lawsuit seeking to block Montana's statewide ban of the popular video-sharing app.
"We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana," a TikTok spokesperson said. "We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts."
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the state ban into law on May 17. If the ban withstands TikTok's challenge, it will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024. TikTok's isn't the only suit challenging the ban. A group of five TikTok users is already suing the state to block the law, according to Reuters.
The ban would hold companies like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) liable if they make TikTok available for download in the state. Each violation would cost the companies $10,000 per user and an additional $10,000 for each day the app remains available.
In an email announcing the lawsuit, TikTok lays out four different reasons for why it believes the ban should be blocked: First Amendment concerns, questions over federal preemption of state laws, the Constitution's Commerce Clause, and that the bill specifically targets TikTok and not social media companies in general.
TikTok claims the lawsuit violates the First Amendment by preventing the company and its users from accessing the app and shutting down a forum of free speech. As for federal preemption, the company says the ban is based on Montana's concerns about national security. Because of that, it states Montana can't pass the ban since national security falls under the federal government's purview.
TikTok further claims the ban also violates the Constitution's Commerce Clause because it "risks disrupting the flow of travel and commerce between states."
First Amendment experts have already come forward saying the ban likely violates both TikTok's and users' free speech rights.
"The ban is a dramatic and unconstitutional incursion on the First Amendment rights of Montanans," Ramya Krishnan, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School told Yahoo Finance. "To justify the ban, Montana would have to show that it's necessary to prevent actual harms. And it hasn't done this."
In a statement after signing the bill, Gianforte said the Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok to "spy on Americans, violate their privacy, and collect personal, private, and sensitive information."
But David Greene, civil liberties director and senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Yahoo Finance that the law is simply too broad.
"This law, as a restriction on the way Montanans speak and receive speech, will need to be justified by the state as an appropriately narrow and effective way of protecting Montanans’ personal data. That will be very difficult to do."
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. Follow him @DanielHowley
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