TikTok on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to block a recently-enacted federal law that would force it to sever ties with its Chinese Communist Party-tied parent company, ByteDance.
In April, President Biden signed the law, which compels ByteDance to sell the massively popular video-sharing platform in 270 days to a U.S.-approved buyer. If a divestment isn’t made within that time period, TikTok will face a ban in American networks and online application stores.
TikTok’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The social media platform attracts 170 million American users every month. Biden can extend the sell-by date for up to 90 more days if he decides.
While the law’s proponents argued it gave TikTok a choice to either sell or face deplatforming, the lawsuit rebutted: “in reality, there is no choice.”
“The ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally,” the filing read. “And certainly not on the 270-day timeline required by the Act.”
Under the law, TikTok would be forced to shutdown by January 19, 2025, the complaint claims. The complainant also said the law violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mean a free and open Internet.
TikTok was uniquely targeted, the filing alleges, because Congress provided other social media companies with paths to avoid being banned. “For Petitioners only, however, there is no statement of reasons and no supporting evidence, with any discussion of the justifications for a ban occurring only behind closed doors,” the filing said.
Biden had pledged to sign the bill even though his 2024 reelection campaign uses a TikTok account. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers also supported the law to decouple TikTok from ByteDance. Many Republicans particularly argued that the CPP uses the app as a weapon to feed harmful content to Americans, especially children and young adults.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged both parties to advance the bill after it had been slow-walked in the upper chamber for weeks. A few days before, former vice president Mike Pence–founded Advancing American Freedom launched a $2 million ad campaign in several states pushing Schumer to move the TikTok measure to a full floor vote. The conservative policy organization’s ad campaign rivals TikTok’s, which spent $2 million to persuade the public to pressure their senators into opposing the bill.
“TikTok is the Chinese Communist Party’s way to feed America’s youth their propaganda and collect data on all TikTok users,” Pence said in a statement.
The law was part of a broader security package House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled last month that included legislation to allow the transfer of seized Russian funds to Ukraine, new Iran sanctions, and other provisions addressing the fentanyl crisis.