VIRGINIA: A group of 18 state attorneys general said they backed Montana’s effort to ban Chinese-owned short video app TikTok, urging a US judge to reject legal challenges ahead of the January 1 effective date.
Led by Virginia and joined by states such as Georgia, Alaska, Utah, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kentucky, and South Dakota, the attorneys general asserted that TikTok’s legal suits, both from the company and its users, should be rejected “because TikTok intentionally engages in deceptive business practices which induce individuals to share sensitive personal information that can be easily accessed by the Chinese Communist Party and because TikTok’s platform harms children in Montana.”
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, did not provide an immediate response to requests for comment on Monday. In May, TikTok initiated a legal action seeking to block the unprecedented state-level ban in the United States. They argued that it violated both the First Amendment’s protection of free speech rights for the company and its users.
A hearing regarding TikTok’s request for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for October 12th.
The state attorneys general emphasized that TikTok, with over 150 million American users, has been subject to increasing demands from US lawmakers for a nationwide ban, citing concerns about potential influence from the Chinese government. Efforts to pass legislation to grant the Biden administration more authority to ban or regulate TikTok have faced obstacles.
In a previous statement, Montana’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, commended the state legislature and governor for prohibiting TikTok’s operations in Montana as long as it remained under the control of a foreign adversary.
In March, lawmakers accused TikTok of delivering harmful content and causing “emotional distress” among young users.
TikTok has asserted that it neither has shared nor would share US user data with the Chinese government. They claim to have implemented significant measures to safeguard the privacy and security of TikTok users.
Montana’s law enables fines of up to $10,000 for each TikTok violation, with no penalties imposed on individual TikTok users. It is estimated that approximately 380,000 people in Montana use the video service, which represents over a third of the state’s 1.1 million residents.
In 2020, former US President Donald Trump attempted to block new downloads of TikTok, but a series of court decisions prevented the ban from taking effect.
