Montana Attorney General Seeks Court Rejection of TikTok Challenge to State Ban, Reports Reuters

By David Shepardson

Montana’s attorney general has requested that a U.S. judge uphold the state’s unique ban on the short video sharing app TikTok before it is set to take effect on January 1.

Owned by China’s ByteDance, TikTok filed a lawsuit in May aiming to stop the first-ever state-wide ban in the U.S., arguing that it infringes on the First Amendment rights of both the company and its users. In addition, a lawsuit has been initiated by TikTok users in Montana.

Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, stated on Monday that the state’s legislature and governor acted appropriately by prohibiting TikTok’s operations in Montana as long as it remains under the control of a foreign adversary.

In a legal filing, Knudsen asserted that Montana is justified in banning harmful products and that doing so does not violate free speech rights. He noted, "If it were otherwise, Montana would lack the power to ban a cancer-causing radio just because it also transmitted protected speech, or to prohibit sports-betting apps simply because they offered informative content on sports gambling." He emphasized that the issues at stake—such as preventing cancer, illegal gambling, or data collection by a hostile foreign entity—are fundamentally non-expressive in nature.

A hearing regarding TikTok’s request for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for October 12.

With over 150 million users in the U.S., TikTok has encountered increasing pressure from lawmakers advocating for a nationwide ban due to concerns over potential Chinese government influence. The company has maintained that it has never shared and would never share U.S. user data with the Chinese government, emphasizing measures taken to secure user privacy and safety.

Under the proposed law, TikTok could face fines of $10,000 for each violation, although individual users would not be penalized. TikTok estimates that approximately 380,000 individuals in Montana utilize its services, which represents over a third of the state’s population of 1.1 million.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to prohibit new downloads of TikTok and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat, but various court rulings prevented these bans from being enacted. While some lawmakers wish to strengthen the Biden administration’s legal framework to restrict TikTok, progress on this initiative has stalled.

Knudsen pointed out that "TikTok’s apparent position is it cannot be regulated—by anyone."

This month, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the ban as unconstitutional, labeling it as a direct infringement on protected forms of expression and association.