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After Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill into a law prohibiting the social media platform TikTok in the state, five users filed a complaint in court saying the ban violates their rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.
The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the District of Montana just hours after the law was enacted.
“Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes,” according to the user’s complaint.
The suit argued that the state is trying to exercise national security power that only the federal government can wield and is violating free speech rights in the process.
“We expected a legal challenge and are fully prepared to defend the law.” said a spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, Emily Flower in a statement.
Gianforte said on Twitter that he endorsed the ban in order to “protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Montana has become the first state to legally bar its citizens from using TikTok owned by a Chinese company ByteDance.
The federal government and over half of the US states have banned TikTok on government official devices. Biden’s administration even threatened it with a complete ban if its parent company refused to sell its shares.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are also among the countries that banned the video-sharing platform on federal government devices, citing national security concerns.
The company denies all the allegations regarding data breaches saying “the company would not do so if asked.”
Reacting to the ban, TikTok said in a statement that the Montana bill “infringes on the first amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” and that the company intends to “defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
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