TikTok is fighting a new US law that would force its Chinese parent to divest from the company or face a ban.
TikTok’s lawyers argued in a court filing Thursday that the company social media platformis not stripped of her rights in the United States for being owned by a foreign organization, comparing the company to several media organizations.
The US Department of Justice argued in a legal brief last month that neither TikTok’s China-based parent company, ‘ByteDance,’ nor the platform’s global and US arms They were entitled to protections of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution because they are “foreign organizations operating abroad” or are solely owned by one.
TikTok lawyers have made the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, a part key to his legal challenge to the new law that forces ‘ByteDance’ to sell the social media platform or face a ban.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, signed the new law in April that gives ‘ByteDance’ nine months to sell the platformwith a possible extension of three months. Otherwise, TikTok faces a ban.
“No precedent supports the drastic rewrite by the Government of what counts as protected expression,” TikTok’s lawyers argued in a court document.
“Certainly, the American companies that publish ‘Politico’, ‘Fortune’ and ‘Business Insider’ do not lose protection of the First Amendment because they have foreign owners,” the lawyers wrote.
In addition to listing multiple media organizations, TikTok lawyers They pointed out that there is a video game developer and several book publishers that are owned by foreign companies.
Not enough separation has been created between operations in the United States and China
In a court filing last month, the US Department of Justice argued that ByteDance and TikTok have not raised valid claims of freedom of expression in your challenge against the lawnoting that the move addresses national security concerns about ownership of TikTok, without targeting protected speech.
The Biden administration and TikTok had held talks in recent years in order to resolve the administration’s concerns, but they did not reach an agreement.
TikTok said the government walked away from the negotiating table after it proposed a 90-page agreement detailing how the company planned to address concerns about the app while still maintaining ties with ‘ByteDance’.
However, the United States Department of Justice has indicated that the propuesta de TikTok “did not create sufficient separation between the company’s operations in the United States and China” and did not adequately addressed some of the concerns of the Biden Government. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin on September 16.
