NEW YORK, Dec 8, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A second US federal judge has suspended
a Trump administration executive order threatening to ban TikTok in the
United States.
The preliminary injunction granted late Monday by judge Carl Nichols in a
district court in Washington DC comes more than a month after a similar
decision in Pennsylvania.
Nichols said TikTok’s lawyers had demonstrated that the Commerce
Department likely overstepped its authority by seeking to ban the popular
social media app and “acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing
to consider obvious alternatives.”
The White House claims TikTok is a national security risk because of
potential links to the Beijing government through its Chinese owner
ByteDance.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving
Americans 45 days to stop doing business with ByteDance — effectively
setting a deadline for a sale of the app to a US company.
Trump’s order said the action was necessary to “protect our national
security” and claimed the personal data of TikTok users could be used by
Beijing.
TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data
transfers to the Chinese government, saying it stores user information on
servers in the United States and Singapore.
The latest order follows an October 30 ruling by a federal court in
Pennsylvania which issued a temporary injunction blocking Trump’s ban.
After a complaint from three TikTok content creators, Judge Wendy
Beetlestone ordered the US administration not to prevent other companies from
providing essential services to the platform, such as online hosting.
Beetlestone had considered that the August 6 presidential decree should be
suspended.
At the end of September, judge Nichols had also issued a temporary
injunction stopping the US from banning downloads of the app, which he said
would cause “irreparable harm” to TikTok, but he refused to rule on its total
ban in the United States.
TikTok has a further fight on its hands over an August 14 executive order
from Trump to force ByteDance to sell its US operations to an American buyer.
The US Treasury has repeatedly extended the deadline for the Chinese group
to divest, and indicated on Friday it would continue negotiations to resolve
the dispute.
TikTok has 100 million users in the United States and 700 million
worldwide.
Washington is in a tense trade battle with Beijing, and Trump’s
administration has stepped up warnings about China’s growing economic and
military power.