President Donald Trump’s executive order to restore access to TikTok has raised new legal questions for the short-video platform, plus additional tensions between the White House, members of Congress who want the platform banned, and tech companies caught in the middle. half.
Legal experts noted that despite Trump’s order, service providers and app distributors like Google and Apple still face great uncertainty and potentially huge financial liability for defying a law that banned TikTok in the US, unless the Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from the network by January 19.
TikTok remained unavailable for download on Apple and Android devices in the US as of early Tuesday afternoon, after Trump signed the executive order on Monday to lift the ban, as one of his first acts as president.
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The order instructs the Justice Department to delay for 75 days any application of the divestment law, passed by Congress last year.
Trump also ordered the attorney general to send a letter to service providers such as app store hosts, stating that there has been no prior violation of the law and that there would be no liability during the review period.
University of Minnesota Law School professor Alan Rozenshtein said in a post that the 75-day delay “offers minimal certainty” since courts do not view such promises as binding.
“Trump could change his mind at any time or selectively enforce against companies that fall into political disgrace,” Rozenshtein wrote.
Google declined to comment and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The divestment law, which Congress passed with overwhelming bipartisan support due to national security concerns about Chinese influence, was signed by President Joe Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court on January 17.
The law imposes a civil penalty on service providers of $5,000 per user for violations of the ban, creating billions of dollars in legal exposure.
Executive orders cannot repeal laws enacted by Congress, and lawmakers have sued in the past to enforce laws they have passed.
However, legal experts said that even a hypothetical lawsuit by both houses of Congress could be a long shot, as courts might be inclined to view this as a political issue best left to the Legislative Branch, or as a matter of national security that falls under the control of the White House.
The TikTok law does not establish a right for private individuals to enforce it. But shareholders could sue service providers who cited Trump’s order to ignore the ban.
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“Vendor shareholders would have a valid case against companies that rely on the executive order,” said cybersecurity and digital privacy expert Timothy Edgar, who teaches at Brown University. “It is a big bet they are taking, given the extraordinary sanctions that the law provides.”
With information from Reuters
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