WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Askume) – A lawyer for TikTok and Chinese parent company ByteDance on Monday sought to persuade a federal appeals court to block a U.S. law that would ban the use of the short video app that is used by 1.7 to 100 million Americans on Jan. 19.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held a two-hour hearing on a lawsuit filed in May by TikTok and ByteDance seeking an injunction to block the law from taking effect .
Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tanney reiterated the US government’s position that Chinese-owned TikTok poses a national security threat because of its access to vast stores of Americans’ personal data, insisting that China is secretly monitoring the popular app and that Americans can be harmed by manipulating this information in this way.
Andrew Pincus, a lawyer representing TikTok and BitBeat, told Justices Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao and Douglas Ginsburg that the US government had not proven that TikTok was actually a threat to national security. Pincus also argued that the law violated the US Constitution in several ways, including violating First Amendment protections against government restrictions on speech.
“The legislation before this court is unprecedented and its impact will be staggering,” Pincus told the justices. “For the first time, Congress has targeted a specific American speaker to restrict the speech of 170 million Americans.”
Under the law, ByteDance has until Jan. 19 to liquidate or sell TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a U.S. ban. Congress passed the measure with overwhelming support and President Joe Biden signed it into law in April, amid concerns that China could obtain data or spy on Americans through the app.
The lawsuit claims that if the law is upheld, Congress would be able to “order the publisher of any newspaper or website to sell it on national security grounds to avoid being shut down.”
Tanney defended the law and warned of Chinese manipulation.
Tenney said, “It’s ridiculous that with these two billion lines of code – 40 times larger than the entire Windows operating system and changing 1,000 times a day – we would somehow find that they have changed the United States and posed a serious threat to national security.”
Rao cited one estimate that source code review (not including updates) could take three years.
Rao asked Pincus: “So how do you make a disclosure or a verified disclosure?”
Rao said many of TikTok’s arguments suggest that courts need to view Congress as an executive branch agency rather than a legislative body that “actually passes laws.”
“This is a very strange framework drawn by Congress,” the judge said.
Ginsburg asked how this differs from other US laws that prevent foreign countries from holding broadcast licenses.
Srinivasan asked Pincus if Congress could ban foreign ownership of major media organizations operating in the United States because the United States is at war with China. Pincus said Congress might be able to do so, but he said lawmakers have not yet incorporated that logic into existing law.
The law bans app stores such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) from offering TikTok and web hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance sells TikTok within a deadline. Under the law, Biden can extend the deadline by three months if he certifies that ByteDance has made significant progress on a sale.
TikTok and the Justice Department have asked for a decision by December 6, allowing the US Supreme Court to consider any appeals before the ban takes effect.
This happened in the final weeks of the US presidential campaign. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris are active on TikTok to appeal to young voters.
The White House said it wants to see China end its ownership of TikTok for national security reasons, but does not want to ban TikTok. Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok in 2020 , said he would do soTikTok will not be allowed to be banned .
