TikTok sues over lack of ‘due process’ in recent ban

SAN FRANCISCO » TikTok sued the U.S. government Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving it of due process when President Donald Trump used his emergency economic powers to issue an executive order that will block the app from operating in the country.

The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, is TikTok’s most direct challenge to the White House and escalates an increasingly bitter back-andforth between the popular video app and U.S. officials.

Trump has repeatedly said TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, poses a national security threat because of its Chinese ties. On Aug. 6, he issued twin executive orders banning transactions with TikTok and Chinese social media app WeChat within 45 days. A week later, he issued a separate executive order giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its U.S. assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the United States.

“We do not take suing the government lightly; however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees,” the company said in its suit. “Our more than 1,500 employees across the U.S. pour their hearts into building this platform every day,’ the company said, noting that it planned to hire more than 10,000 more workers across eight states in the coming years.

TikTok claimed that the purported national security threat identified by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United

States was based on “outdated news articles” and did not address the documentation provided by TikTok demonstrating the security of user data.

One of the Trump administration’s chief concerns has been the storage of American user data on foreign servers. But in its complaint, TikTok said it had taken “extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s U.S. user data,” which included storing American users’ data outside China on servers in the United States and Singapore.

The executive orders against TikTok have led ByteDance to explore a sale of the popular video app, which is used by millions of teenagers and influencers. The company is in talks with multiple American firms, including Microsoft and Oracle, for a sale of at least parts of its business.