TikTok sues U.S. government over ban: Here's what's to know

Tick Tock is suing the US government over a new law that would have forced its Chinese parent company, Byte Dance, to divest the app or face a nationwide ban, marking the first legal challenge since that law actually passed in April. Joining us right now is Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times business reporter. And Sapna, let’s talk this through. We knew that the lawsuit was coming, but but now what? This is something that’s going to really slow things down. You’re going to see it probably appealed all the way to the Supreme Court is what some people are saying what what does this do to the timeline? So right now the timeline stands as is, I think TikTok said. And it’s a lawsuit that they believe based on this law, if nothing else happens, the TikTok app would potentially go away from the US in January of 2025. But we were expecting TikTok to file this suit and this is really the company’s last chance to to sort of proceed and make its case that it shouldn’t be sold from Bytedance and that a ban of the app would be a First Amendment violation. It’s interesting the the, the the play here is either is it national security, is it First Amendment right to free speech? Which one of those takes precedence on this? And I don’t know if you’re familiar with what the government would have to prove in order to say that it’s national security. Is the burden of proof on the government to say this? Or because the law already exists, the burden of proof is on TikTok to say that that’s not a threat and that First Amendment should be what plays out here. My understanding is the government will have to prove that the 1st Amendment violation is justified in this case. And again, for those national security reasons that you mentioned, I’ve been speaking with lawmakers and Justice Department officials, folks at the National Security Council, they have been working actually on this bill for months and months, really close to a year. And they’ve been anticipating the arguments that TikTok will be making in court. And so I know I am extremely eager to see you how the government responds here to what TikTok set forth in its filing yesterday. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has said that he is interested in purchasing this, said yesterday that he thinks he would be able to find developers who can rewrite the algorithm. Because Bike Dances said or Tick Tock has said that it will not be for Subite, Dances said it won’t sell it with the algorithm. So they would have to have a new algorithm in place. But while this lawsuit is taking place, I would imagine that the company is not going to be looking to or talking to any potential acquisition or buyers through any of this. So what does that mean if they say they can’t do this in 270 days? What are the odds of a sale if they’re not doing anything in the meantime while they await the court process? Yeah, I mean, it’s really tricky. I think that they will be able to ask a judge at some point, most likely for an injunction or something that might stop the clock for a period. I think that if they do enter negotiations in good faith with a potential buyer, the timeline could be extended to up to a year. But you know, really throughout this filing TikTok is making the case that it is impossible for it to actually sell the business to a non Chinese owner. And they give lots of different reasons for that. And so you know it remains to be seen if that argument is bought by a judge and if you know if that this is then litigated as an actual ban. If the if the real reason is, and they’ve said this in the past that the Chinese government won’t allow it, how do you think that plays out in court? U.S. government says you must do this. The Chinese government says, no, you can’t. I mean, it’s probably not a great situation for TikTok because a lot of what they’ve been saying is that they are not subject to the whims of the Chinese government, the Chinese. But they did mention this in their filing that this is a hurdle to potential sale. They also said, you know, selling Tik Tok’s US operations would sort of hurt the operability of the app that it is in international experience, just like Instagram or YouTube. They also said that it would just be really hard to pour over the underlying source code for the app to new owners, saying it would take years for engineers to familiarize themselves with it and even just sort of do the basic maintenance. So yeah, they’ve they’ve really laid out a lot of reasons for why this isn’t possible.