China’s TikTok Files Lawsuit in Response to U.S. Sell-or-Ban Law

China’s TikTok and its parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in response to the U.S. sell-or-ban legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden, which gives the Chinese company nine months to sell the app or face a ban in the United States.

TikTok and ByteDance filed a court petition against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “for review of constitutionality” of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the Chinese company said on Tuesday.

“Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok,” the petition states in response to the U.S. law giving ByteDance, which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), until January to sell TikTok.

TikTok and ByteDance, controlled by a hostile foreign country run by communists, ironically go on to call the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “unconstitutional.”

“Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership,” the Chinese companies added.

TikTok and ByteDance further claim that while the Act says the companies have the choice to divest the app’s U.S. business or be shut down, “in reality, there is no choice.”

Interestingly, the foreign companies essentially make the national security case for the U.S. government by further explaining that they cannot comply with the divestment requirement because “the Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment” of ByteDance’s algorithm.

“The Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States,” the petition reads. “Like the United States, China regulates the export of certain technologies originating there.”

“China’s export control rules cover ‘information processing technologies’ such as ‘personal interactive data algorithms,'” the petition adds.

As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. sell-or-ban legislation was established due to TikTok widely being considered a national security threat by U.S. lawmakers in both the Republican and Democrat Party, given that its parent company is controlled by Chinese communists.

Additionally, the app has shown itself to be a physical danger to kids and teens, and is facing multiple lawsuits brought by several families who say the Chinese social media platform is directly responsible for the deaths of their children.

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