It's on, briefly: TikTok sues Montana over statewide ban

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, is intended to “prevent the state of Montana from unlawfully banning TikTok,” lawyers for the app’s parent company, ByteDance wrote. …

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“Montana’s ban abridges freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment, violates the U.S. Constitution in multiple other respects and is preempted by federal law,” the attorneys said.

[The state’s ban does not violate the First Amendment, but it almost certainly violates the Interstate Commerce Clause. Social media platforms are by their nature interstate and international commerce, the jurisdiction for which belongs explicitly to Congress in Article I, Section 8. There may be other ways in which Montana overstepped its bounds, but that’s by far enough for a federal court to rule for pre-emption and enjoin the state from attempting to enforce the law. And for that matter, just how would the state enforce such a ban? The carriers on which TikTok operates are *also* interstate as well as international, and TikTok is just as available on computers as it is through smartphones. This is a performative piece of legislation, not a serious effort to actually deal with the security issues of TikTok. The state can certainly ban the app from its own devices, but that’s as far as they can go. — Ed]

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