Five Montana TikTok creators filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the state’s prohibition on the Chinese-owned platform.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte issued a TikTok ban on Wednesday, beginning January 1. The five users want to overturn the regulation, which prohibits Google and Apple from offering TikTok in the state.
Late Wednesday, Montana’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, was named in the case in U.S. District Court.
TikTok users say the state wants “exercise powers over national security that Montana does not have and to ban speech Montana may not suppress.” So users sued, claiming the law violated their First Amendment rights.
“Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes,” the lawsuit argued.
Knudsen spokeswoman Emily Flower said the state was preparing for lawsuits. “We expected a legal challenge and are fully prepared to defend the law,” she said.
U.S. politicians and state authorities are calling for a statewide ban on ByteDance’s TikTok due to fears about Chinese government influence.
According to the lawsuit, the five plaintiffs, all Montana residents, are a designer of sustainable swimwear who uses TikTok to promote her company and engage with customers, a former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who uses it to connect with other veterans, a rancher who shares content about her outdoor adventures, a student studying applied human physiology who shares content about her outdoor adventures, and a man who shares humorous videos.
After the governor signed the law on Wednesday, Knudsen, a Republican like Gianforte, labeled TikTok “a Chinese Communist Party spying tool that poses a threat to every Montanan.”
After the governor approved the bill, TikTok claimed Montana’s prohibition “infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” it will “continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
Gianforte called the law “our shared priority to protect Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance.”
TikTok has frequently denied sharing data with the Chinese authorities and stated it would not do so if asked. Judge Donald Molloy, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1995, oversees the case.
If it breaks the restriction, Montana, with a little over 1 million residents, may pay TikTok $10,000 daily. Numerous courts halted Trump’s 2020 Commerce Department effort to restrict TikTok and WeChat downloads.
