President Donald Trump has likely overstepped the law on the TikTok issue, a U.S. judge has said.
San Francisco, United States:
The US judge who lifted the TikTok download ban on Monday said President Donald Trump had likely broken the law by trying to move.
TikTok had shown that the actions against him “likely exceeded the legal limits” of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) which was cited to support the ban, the judge said in his ruling.
District Judge Carl Nichols issued a temporary injunction at the request of TikTok, which the White House has called a threat to national security stemming from its Chinese parent company’s ties to the Beijing government.
The government decree aimed to ban new downloads of the hugely popular video-sharing app at midnight Sunday.
“The plaintiffs have demonstrated that they are likely to be successful on their IEEPA claims,” Nichols said in the written decision.
The law prohibits a president from banning personal communications not involving anything of value, according to the judge.
Nichols found the TikTok posts to be informative.
“Over 100 million Americans currently use TikTok to share their movies, photographs, artwork and news,” Nichols noted in the ruling.
The ban would also have caused TikTok harm from which he could not recover, according to the judge.
“Excluding TikTok from US app stores would, of course, have the immediate and direct effect of stopping the influx of new users, likely driving those users to alternative platforms and eroding TikTok’s competitive position.” Nichols wrote.
Lawyers for TikTok argued in their documents that the ban was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“We are pleased that the court accepted our legal arguments and issued an injunction,” TikTok said in a statement.
Government lawyers argued that the president has the right to take national security measures and said the ban was necessary because of TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government through its parent company ByteDance. “
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond Law School, called the order a “pragmatic short-term baby split, to give them some time to resolve differences and find a solution.”
TikTok’s global lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s executive orders continues in court.
Outside of the courtroom, TikTok may continue to try to close a sale or an alliance to allay US concerns.
A tentative deal would make Silicon Valley giant Oracle the technology partner of TikTok and a stake in a new entity called TikTok Global.
Such a deal should be frowned upon by Beijing, where some see the US move as an unwarranted appropriation of Chinese technology.
