US federal judge temporarily blocks Montana’s TikTok ban

A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the state of Montana’s complete TikTok ban. This is an interim ruling, but the judge calls the law in its current form ‘unconstitutional in several ways’.

According to the judge, Donald Molloy, the ban on TikTok in the US state of Montana violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution. writes The Washington Post. The ban would deny 300,000 users the ability to “communicate and express themselves in a manner of their choosing,” which falls under the constitution’s freedom of expression. Molloy states that the law would probably not pass even with ‘mild vetting’.

The full trial will continue at an as yet unspecified time. The same judge will then make a ruling. The state of Montana still has the opportunity to provide further arguments and evidence during that lawsuit. On the other hand, several experts tell the newspaper that it is ‘unlikely’ that Molloy will change his judgment. The law is said to be ‘technically incompetent’, among other things. The judge says that the legislation is very inconsistent; the law was allegedly passed to teach China a lesson, not to protect its citizens. He argues that the state could have achieved the same by restricting data collection and sharing by TikTok.

Since the introduction of the law, there has been a lot of criticism about a complete ban of TikTok. The current lawsuit was filed by ByteDance, the parent company of the social medium. Both users and content creators have also filed lawsuits against the state. In the latter case, it turned out that TikTok sponsors the creators; the plaintiffs were thus encouraged to invoke their fundamental rights in court, which TikTok as a company cannot do.

Under the law passed in May, which would take effect in January 2024, TikTok providers could be fined up to $10,000 per day. This made the use of the app not a punishable offense for users, but for platforms that offer the app, such as Google with the Play Store and Apple with the App Store.