(San Francisco) Five TikTok users filed an appeal in federal court in Montana, hours after the social network was banned in the state on Wednesday, seeking the reversal of this decision.
The case was filed shortly after the governor of this northwestern US state, Greg Gianforte, signed into law the law banning from 1er January 2024 the distribution of the application by the mobile application stores (Apple and Google), under penalty of a fine of 10,000 dollars per day and per violation.
“Montana can no more prohibit its residents from viewing or posting on TikTok than it can prohibit the Wall Street Journal on the basis of the identity of its owner or the opinions it conveys”, is it written in the appeal.
The short video app is owned by Chinese group ByteDance and many US lawmakers believe it allows Beijing to spy on and manipulate users, which the company denies.
For Mr. Gianforte, the ban must “protect from the Chinese Communist Party the data” of Montana residents.
The petitioners respond that the state is violating the right to freedom of expression and attempting to arrogate the powers of the federal government, which has jurisdiction over matters of national security.
According to the litigation document, the plaintiffs have a substantial number of followers on TikTok and are making money from the app.
Montana is the first US state to ban the social network, and will serve as a test for a possible national ban, which elected officials in Washington are demanding more and more strongly.
The ban will be reversed if TikTok is acquired by a company whose country of origin is not considered an adversary state by the United States, however, specifies the text of the law.
The app is already banned by many organizations, from federal agencies in the United States to the European Commission to the BBC.