(News Channel Nebraska)—The Liberty Justice Center reports that a U.S. appeals court has rejected constitutional challenges to a federal law that will ban the TikTok social media platform effective Jan. 19.
Jacob Huebert of the Liberty Justice Center says the law threatens the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use TikTok to share and hear political ideas.
Huebert says there is no evidence that TikTok, which is developed by China-based ByteDance, threatens national security.
The three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., said the platform’s expansive reach of 170 million Americans and its control by the Chinese government makes it a national security issue.
In 2021, President Joe Biden identified the Chinese government as a foreign adversary that uses its control of software applications to threaten U.S. national security interests by gathering information from “vast swaths” of users.
The court upheld the federal law saying the Chinese government should sell TikTok or face an effective ban in the United States.
If ByteDance does not sell TikTok by Jan. 19, internet hosts, Apple and Google will stop supporting the app.
In March, Congressman Mike Flood issued a statement after Nebraska became the first state in the nation to institute a ban on TikTok on government devices and the U.S. House voted on the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Flood: “TikTok is the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite social media app for Americans. It has been used as a tool of propaganda in our country and this narrowly tailored bill will help put an end to that. The legislation requires TikTok’s parent company to divest from their American division or to face an outright ban in the United States. Today’s vote was an overwhelming bipartisan show of force sending a message: America will not allow our foreign adversaries to use our country’s free marketplace to undermine our love for liberty.”