TikTok is suing the United States government in an effort to stop enforcement of a bill passed last month that seeks to force the app’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argues that the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates constitutional protections of free speech. The suit calls the law an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment.
The lawsuit states that Congress has not offered any evidence suggesting that TikTok poses the types of data security risks or foreign propaganda spread that “could conceivably justify” the law, and has failed to prove that the app poses any specific harm in these areas.