In the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has moved to immediately remove WeChat from its domestic app store. A hearing was held on Monday (January 26) in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but an appeals court judge denied the DOJ’s request.
In his ruling, the appeals court judge noted that the case involving the WeChat ban will begin in January 2021, and that the federal government has failed to show “imminent and irreparable harm” while the case is pending, thus denying the DOJ’s request. TenCent, WeChat’s parent company, and the Commerce Department did not immediately respond.
The U.S. federal government was scheduled to block WeChat and another Chinese mobile app, TikTok, starting last month, but the WeChat Users Alliance filed a challenge to the Commerce Department’s injunction earlier this month. California Federal District Judge Laurel Beeler issued an injunction late last month halting Washington’s ban on WeChat, saying that blocking WeChat would be too big a blow to free speech.
The Justice Department later asked Beeler to withdraw the injunction, granting Washington an immediate ban on WeChat downloads from Apple and Google’s U.S. app stores, but Beeler refused last Friday, and the Justice Department went back to the Circuit Court of Appeals.
The DOJ argued that TikTok and WeChat pose a threat to U.S. national security, and President Trump said earlier that the ban was necessary to protect national security.
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