US judge, in granting TikTok reprieve, says Trump likely overstepped his authority
A US federal judge said he blocked the Trump administration's ban on Chinese-owned video app TikTok on Sunday because the move likely overstepped the president's legal authority by blocking an information channel.
Citing his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in August threatening to ban TikTok and WeChat, a Chinese-owned messaging app, saying the companies could be required to turn over users' personal data to Beijing and pose a national security risk.
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"TikTok (like a news wire, which is expressly identified in IEEPA's carveout) is primarily a conduit of 'informational materials'," Nichols said.
The TikTok ban will also "inflict irreparable economic and reputational harm" to the company, Nichols said.
By temporarily blocking the ban, the ruling made on Sunday prevented the ban of the app from the US stores that was set to go into effect Sunday night.
The Commerce Department defended President Trump's executive order banning TikTok from the United States, saying that while it would comply with the court order that delayed the ban, it intends to "vigorously defend" the executive order.
"The [executive order] is fully consistent with the law and promotes legitimate national security interests," the US Commerce Department said in a statement.
The parties would need to confer by Wednesday on next steps in the dispute.
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, sued Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the Commerce Department on September 18, saying the administration had acted without due process and in violation of the First Amendment. The app owners asked Nichols to issue a preliminary injunction to halt the ban.
On Friday, the Trump administration filed an objection to TikTok's request to stop the ban.
According to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray, Chinese intelligence and economic espionage presents "the greatest long-term threat to US national security and economic security", according to the filing.
The document, however, fell short of explaining how TikTok presented as a national security, beyond the fact that TikTok founder Zhang Yiming was listed as "top 100 outstanding private entrepreneurs" in the country and parent company ByteDance has more than 130 Chinese Communist Party members in its Beijing office, according to news reports.
The legal back and forth took place as parent company ByteDance sought government approval for its proposed deal with Oracle and Walmart for its US operations.
In a similar ruling for WeChat that also won reprieve from being banned on September 20, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler of California on September 19 ruled in favour of a group WeChat users in the US, saying US government failed to provide enough evidence of a security threat.
Last week, Trump asked the judge to stay the injunction for the ban on WeChat to take effect.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
