TikTok is officially suing the Trump Administration for trying to ban the app in the U.S.
The video platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, filed a lawsuit Monday against the U.S. government.
The app argues that it isn’t a national security threat and says that they have been denied due process due to Trump’s executive order.
“We do not take suing the government lightly; however, we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights and the rights of our community and employees,” TikTok said in a statement. “With the Executive Order threatening to bring a ban on our U.S. operations — eliminating the creation of 10,000 American jobs and irreparably harming the millions of Americans who turn to this app for entertainment, connection and legitimate livelihoods that are vital especially during the pandemic — we simply have no choice.”
Earlier this month, Donald Trump filed the executive order banning TikTok by September 15, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Trump claimed the Chinese-based app was a threat to national security and could steal American users’ data.
TikTok is currently in talks to sell its American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand operations to American companies Microsoft and Oracle in order to save it from being banned in the U.S.
“The executive order seeks to ban TikTok purportedly because of the speculative possibility that the application could be manipulated by the Chinese government,” TikTok wrote in the lawsuit.
“But, as the U.S. government is well aware, Plaintiffs have taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s U.S. user data, including by having TikTok store such data outside of China (in the United States and Singapore) and by erecting software barriers that help ensure that TikTok stores its U.S. user data separately from the user data of other ByteDance products.”
The Trump Administration has yet to comment on the lawsuit.
