Federal District Judge Wendy Bittelstrom of Pennsylvania on Friday (Oct. 30) issued a temporary restraining order temporarily preventing the U.S. Department of Commerce from enforcing an injunction against technology deals with TikTok, which is scheduled to take effect on Nov. 12.
TikTok is the Gulf version of Shakespeare, a short-form video-sharing app from China’s Byte Jump, which is popular around the world and has a large number of young users in the United States. President Trump issued an executive order in August of this year requiring app stores in the U.S. to remove TikTok from their shelves under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and prohibiting Internet service providers from providing technical support for TikTok’s operation in the U.S., arguing that byte-hopping was a threat to U.S. national security because it was controlled by China’s Communist Party government. The first part of the injunction was supposed to take effect on September 27, and the second part was scheduled to take effect on November 12.
Following a lawsuit filed by TikTok, Federal District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., issued a last-minute temporary injunction on Sept. 27, staying the ban on downloading TikTok from app stores. Judge Nicholas is scheduled to hear whether to enforce the injunction against trading with TikTok on November 4.
In the meantime, three TikTok content creators have filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Pennsylvania. They claim that the administration’s injunction deprives them of the ability to interact with their millions of followers and related brand sponsorships.
Judge Bittelstrom refused to grant a temporary injunction against the ban on app downloads in September, but on Friday she ordered that the Commerce Department not enforce the ban on data storage, content delivery, and other transactions to TikTok’s U.S. business while the case is pending in court. Her latest temporary restraining order also includes an injunction against enforcing the ban on app downloads.
In her ruling, Bittelstrom said that the administration’s injunction “would effectively shut down in the United States a platform that approximately 700 million people around the world use for their expressive activities. More than 100 million of those TikTok users are in the United States, and at least 50 million of those U.S. users use the app on a daily basis.
She also wrote: “The short videos created and shared on TikTok are expressive and informative in nature, similar to the ‘films,’ ‘works of art,’ and ‘artwork’ explicitly protected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). ‘Photos’ and ‘Press Release Sending’.”
Thus far, both elements of the administration’s injunction against TikTok have been blocked in U.S. courts. The U.S. Department of Justice has appealed the temporary restraining order issued by Judge Nicholas. The DOJ may also appeal Judge Toston’s latest temporary restraining order.
The U.S. administration also issued a similar injunction against WeChat, the Gulf-based version of the social media app WeChat owned by China’s Tencent, for the same national security reasons, but the WeChat injunction is currently blocked in U.S. courts.
President Trump has also issued another executive order, also effective Nov. 12, requiring TikTok to divest its U.S. operations by a deadline, and TikTok has already entered into a partnership with Oracle Corporation and Walmart, but it is unclear whether this will be approved by the U.S. government.
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