Virginia is among a coalition of states urging an appeals court to uphold a new law that could potentially ban TikTok nationwide. “We cannot allow a foreign government to exploit our personal information or influence our younger generation with dangerous content,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a Monday news release. “The divest-or-ban legislation is a necessary measure to safeguard Americans.
” TikTok is a global social media platform for creating and sharing short videos. President Joe Biden signed a bill this year that would outlaw TikTok if ByteDance — its Beijing-based parent company — doesn’t sell its stake. Legislators concerned with TikTok say it’s a threat to national security because the Chinese Communist Party can demand access to its consumer data, and more than 170 million Americans use the platform.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge in May in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit arguing no public evidence has been presented to back claims that TikTok is a security threat and that the law is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment. Along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, Miyares is co-leading an amicus brief from 21 states urging the court to reject this argument. “(The law) bans TikTok not for its speech but because of separate harms: its practices of harvesting reams of personal, private data from American users and sharing that data with a hostile foreign government,” the brief states.
“There are no protected expressive attributes in a hostile foreign government’s massive data-harvesting efforts intentionally directed at Americans.” The brief argues that TikTok cannot use the First Amendment “as a cloak” for its data-harvesting practices. “Were it otherwise, Congress would be powerless to ban a cancer causing radio merely because that radio also transmitted protected speech, or to ban sports-betting apps merely because those apps also shared informative videos teaching their users the intricacies of sports gambling,” the brief states.
“The targeted harms — preventing cancer, illegal gambling, or data-gathering by a hostile foreign state—are inherently nonexpressive. Overlaying them with expressive conduct — radio communications or instructive videos — does not change that calculus.” The legislation passed the House of Representatives and the Senate earlier this year.
The bill received support from Hampton Roads legislators, including Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach; Bobby Scott, D-Newport News; and Rob Wittman, R-Yorktown. Gov.
Glenn Youngkin, who urged federal lawmakers to support the bill, has worked to restrict TikTok in Virginia. The governor issued an executive order in 2022 banning the use of TikTok on state government devices and wireless networks. Katie King, katie.
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