A US judge has temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s ban on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat.

Users: Trump’s order ignores livelihood of those relying on app

After three hearings held in three consecutive days, a US judge temporarily hit pause on President Donald Trump’s ban on WeChat, a Chinese messaging, social media and mobile payment app, originally slated to go into effect on Sunday night.

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler in San Francisco issued the order granting motion for preliminary injunction, which determined that the restrictions placed on WeChat could violate the Constitutional Amendment rights of its users in the United States.

On Aug 6, Trump issued an executive order banning US transactions via WeChat, which took effect on Sunday.

On Friday, the US Commerce Department issued the Identification of Prohibited Transactions.

“The result is that consumers in the US cannot download or update the WeChat app, use it to send or receive money, and – because US support for the app by data hosting and content caching will be eliminated – the app, while perhaps technically available to existing US users, likely will be useless to them,” Judge Beeler wrote in her order on Sunday.

Many WeChat users in the United States, including the US WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA), believe that the app is irreplaceable for them, particularly in the Chinesespeaking and Chinese-American community, and the executive order ignores the livelihood of people who rely on the app.

To fight for the legal rights of all WeChat users in the country, the USWUA sued the Trump administration for the ban.

The lawsuit opened in court on Thursday.

The active users of WeChat, developed by the Chinese tech giant Tencent, exceeds 1.2 billion this year, including tens of millions of overseas customers.

More than five million ChineseAmericans are currently living in the United States, and most of them use WeChat.

Arthur Dong, an active Chinese community leader who runs a photographers’ club in the Bay Area, said if WeChat was banned, he would not be able to find an alternative to manage his business.

“WeChat has become an essential part of diverse communities for not only Chinese social communication, but also corporations between Chinese and American people in various fields,” Dong said.

“Using WeChat to initiate charity concerts and other events, we have raised and donated more than US$100,000 (RM411,251) to support the reconstruction of Northern California towns destroyed by wildfire.

“It would be impossible without WeChat.”