A group of TikTok creators, including a rancher, a skin care entrepreneur and a promoter of biblical literacy, sued the federal government on Tuesday over a new law that would force the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the company or face a ban in the united states. They said it violated their First Amendment rights.
The eight creators “found their voices, amassed significant audiences, made new friends and encountered new and different ways of thinking — all thanks to novel ways of hosting, curating and spreading the word of TikTok,” the complaint said. The potential ban “threatens to deny them, and the rest of the country, this unique means of expression and communication.”
The lawsuit, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which the new law designated as jurisdiction for challenges, is expected as the company’s next step after it filed its own lawsuit against the federal government in last week, calling the law unconstitutional. TikTok said it is paying the legal fees for the creators’ lawsuit.
TikTok took a similar legal approach in 2020, when creators successfully challenged a federal ban, as well as last year in Montana, when creators sued the state after it tried to ban the app. Davis Wright Tremaine, the law firm representing the creators, also represented app creators in Montana last year.
TikTok is fighting for its future in the United States after President Biden signed the law in April. Concerns have been mounting for years among lawmakers and intelligence officials that the Chinese government could lean on ByteDance to turn over sensitive TikTok user data or use the app to spread propaganda.
TikTok has pushed back on those claims and said it has spent billions of dollars to address security concerns. Many legal experts expect the dispute over the law to reach the Supreme Court.
In a statement Tuesday, a Justice Department spokesman said: “This legislation addresses critical national security concerns in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations. We look forward to defending the legislation in court .”
The creators’ suit said a divestment of TikTok from ByteDance is “infeasible, as the company has stated and as publicly available records confirm.” It argued that the law was therefore a ban that would violate the First Amendment rights of its users.
Similar to TikTok’s lawsuit last week, the complaint asks the court to issue a declaratory judgment saying the law violates the Constitution and to issue an injunction preventing Attorney General Merrick B. Garland from enforcing it.
The creators represent a range of people who use the app in the United States, where, TikTok says, it has 170 million monthly users. With them is Brian Firebaugh, a first generation hunter in Texas, and Paul Tran, who runs a skin care brand with his wife. Other plaintiffs include Christopher Townsend, a hip-hop artist who shares Bible quizzes with his followers, and Kiera Spann, an advocate for sexual assault survivors.
Mr. Firebaugh, who has more than 400,000 TikTok followers, “had to get another job and pay for day care instead of raising her child at home” without the income from TikTok’s popular creator fund and sales of ranch products offered through the app, the lawyers wrote. Mr. Townsend, who has 2.5 million followers, “faces the loss of a platform where he has been able to express his beliefs and share his spirituality and music with the world,” the complaint said.
The creators tried using other social media apps like Instagram “with less success,” the complaint said. It also said that TikTok’s “defining characteristics stem from the editorial decisions it makes using its proprietary content recommendation technology.” A change in ownership can change users’ experiences.
The complaint also points to statements made by lawmakers arguing that TikTok pushes pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views to its young users. “These arguments focus on censoring TikTok’s content recommendation system,” the complaint said, adding that there was no evidence that TikTok was pushing propaganda on Americans.
