After U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on Oct. 30 blocked the Commerce Department from enforcing an injunction against technology transactions with TikTok’s U.S. business that was scheduled to take effect Nov. 12, the Commerce Department said Nov. 1 that it would “comply with the injunction” but would “vigorously defend” the executive order on TikTok and the Commerce Secretary’s efforts to enforce it in the face of legal action.
Pennsylvania’s federal judge, Bill Bittelstrom, ordered last Friday that the Commerce Department not prohibit TikTok from storing data, sending content, and engaging in other technology transactions within the United States while the case is pending in court. Her latest temporary restraining order also includes a ban on app downloads.
The Trump administration issued the injunction against TikTok by executive order. The U.S. government argued that TikTok, the overseas version of China’s byte-hopping company Jitterbug, raised national security concerns because the Chinese government could gain access to the personal data of the 100 million Americans who use the app, allegations that TikTok denied.
In his ruling, Judge Bittelstrom wrote that “the government’s own descriptions of the threat to national security posed by TikTok are hypothetical in their wording.”
On Sept. 27, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Commerce Department from ordering Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. to remove TikTok from their Google Play stores, an order that was scheduled to take effect later that day. Nichols is scheduled to hold a hearing on Nov. 4 on other elements of the Commerce Department’s injunction, which were already covered by Judge Bittelstrom’s ruling.
The lawsuit in Washington was filed by TikTok, Inc. and the lawsuit in Pennsylvania was filed by three TikTok content creators.
The U.S. government has also issued a similar injunction against WeChat, the overseas version of WeChat, the social media app owned by China’s Tencent, for the same national security reasons, but the WeChat injunction is currently being blocked in U.S. courts.
President Trump has also issued another executive order giving TikTok a deadline to divest its U.S. operations, and TikTok has reached preliminary deals with U.S.-based Oracle and Walmart to take stakes in a new company called TikTok International. The new company will be responsible for operations in the US. The parties have been in talks to finalize the deal. Trump said last month that the deal had his “blessing,” but it’s unclear whether it will be finally approved by the U.S. government.
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