TikTok Users Waste No Time: Sue Montana Same Day TikTok Ban Was Signed
from the the-tiktok-dancing-legal-explainers-are-gonna-be-awesome dept
We noted yesterday that Montana’s embarrassment of a governor, Greg Gianforte, was about to cost the state a ridiculous amount of taxpayer money having to defend his obviously unconstitutional ban on TikTok. What I hadn’t realized was that by the time I’d published that article, the first such lawsuit had already been filed.
Five TikTok users have sued the state of Montana, represented by Austin Knudsen, the state’s Attorney General. And the complaint opens by using Knudsen’s own words against him:
Plaintiffs, creators and viewers of content on TikTok, bring this lawsuit to challenge An Act Banning TikTok in Montana (SB 419). The Act attempts to exercise powers over national security that Montana does not have and to ban speech Montana may not suppress. By shuttering an entire forum for communication that Defendant Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen himself admitted is one of “the best way[s] … to get your free speech out there,” the law creates a prior restraint on expression that violates the First Amendment, depriving Montanans of access to a forum that for many is a “principal source[] for knowing current events” and “otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge.” Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 99 (2017).
The opening lays out the basis of the lawsuit pretty plainly and clearly:
Montana’s claimed interests in SB 419 are not legitimate and do not support a blanket ban on TikTok. Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous. 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. Even if Montana could regulate any of the speech that users share through TikTok, SB 419 wields a sledgehammer when the First Amendment requires a scalpel.
SB 419 is unconstitutional and preempted by federal law. The Act violates the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the Foreign Affairs and Commerce Clauses of the United States Constitution. The Act is also preempted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701 et seq., and by Section 721 of the Defense Production Act (Section 721), 50 U.S.C. § 4565, which authorize the President and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)— not individual states—to investigate and if necessary mitigate national security risks arising from foreign economic actors.
You can read the whole complaint, which goes into a lot more detail on what’s stated in the two paragraphs above, but I’ll just highlight one more section, which points out that former President Trump tried and failed to ban TikTok already, so it’s unclear why Montana officials believe that their law has any chance of being found constitutional.
Federal judges have three times enjoined attempts to ban TikTok. See TikTok Inc. v. Trump, 490 F. Supp. 3d 73, 83 (D.D.C. 2020) (holding that former President Trump lacked authority to issue an executive order to “regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly” any exchange of “informational materials” or “personal communication[s]” transmitted to the United States through TikTok) (citation & internal quotation marks omitted); Marland v. Trump, 498 F. Supp. 3d 624, 642 (E.D. Pa. 2020) (enjoining same executive order; rejecting government’s “descriptions of the national security threat posed by the TikTok app” as “hypothetical”); TikTok Inc. v. Trump, 507 F. Supp. 3d 92, 112 (D.D.C. 2020) (enjoining the same executive order)
Montana is going to lose this lawsuit. And, in a just world, it would permanently embarrass the governor and the legislature, but in these culture warring days, it will probably just embolden them to produce even more nonsense.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, alice held, austin knudsen, carly add goddard, dale stout, free speech, greg gianforte, heather dirocco, montana, samantha alario, tiktok ban
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “TikTok Users Waste No Time: Sue Montana Same Day TikTok Ban Was Signed”
Are these losing laws being passed and then thrown out by the court intended to enrage their supporters to enable them to engineer a coup?
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Digital Fentanyl
Now that we’ve identified some of the addicts, we can get them the help they’ve needed.
Re:
You first.
I INSIST.
I think it has become a competition between right wingnut politicians to see who can pass the most unconstitutional laws.
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The funny thing i’ve been waiting for is the wingnuts on tiktok to file (really bad) lawsuits over the same issue. Call their wingnut brethren “deep state” and all that.
It would have been even better if they would have been able to serve the governor while he was signing the bill.
Montana is going to lose this lawsuit. And, in a just world, it would permanently embarrass the governor and the legislature, but in these culture warring days, it will probably just embolden them to produce even more nonsense.
When the person/people passing the laws are incapable of feeling the emotion of ‘shame’ and the audience they’re playing to loathes the first amendment as much as they do sadly getting smacked down in court multiple times doesn’t really give them much incentive to not just keep trying.
Not like they’ll face any penalty for passing unconstitutional laws or anything, if anything it’s the reverse given the aforementioned first amendment hatred among their supporters.
Use a VPN to bypass that. There is no law there makes it illegal to use a VPN to bypass a firewall
Just like when I want to go to Mickey D’s and want to watch the ballgame on my phone and I bypass their filters (which block the service I use) using a VPN, I am breaking any state or federal laws doing that.
There is no law in any of the 50 states that makes it a crime to bypass a firewall to access blocked sites.
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Yeah, but if the unconstitutional law is thrown out, you don’t need a VPN to get around it.
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Plenty of countries have (or are trying to) made them illegal. And I imagine a number of states would like to do the same.
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Bypassiing your work or school firewall does not break the law in any of the 50 states.
While you would be fired or suspended you cannot be prosecuted crminally for bypassing your work or school firewall with a proxy or VPN
You can be fired, but your boss cannot put you in jail for it.
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What is true now may not be true tomorrow. The GOP is on a massive shredding people’s rights rampage.
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They’re protecting rights. Just ask them. Particularly that 2nd Amendment bit, although they have that one wrong. There needs to be some discussion about the “well-regulated” part, IMHO.
Re: Re: Re: cfaa
Exceeding authorized access, wait for some hammer-head of an AUSA to give it a try.
Re: You're missing the point.
The law is unconstitutional. We need to kill it, not make accommodations for it. You keep playing their game, and you’ll end up without a VPN too.
‘it will probably just embolden them to produce even more nonsense’
so much truth here! it doesn’t just apply to state governors etc, but even worse, it applies to every government, everywhere! all rights that were so hard fought for and won are being sytematically erroded, bit by bit, little by little so that everything possible is known about us with so little known about governments and friends except what they want us to know, especially when it comes to election promises! we are being forced back to the days of the ‘plantation owners and the slave work-force that can say nothing, do nothing other than what the ‘MASTER’ says.3 or 4 centuries of fighting to become people, with the right to speak our mind, go to friends, read a book other than The Bible, should we chose and, more importantly, get a fair days pay for a fair days work and have rights under the law! once these fuckers get it all back it will take a lot longer than 400 years to get it back!!
I guess this leaves Montanans little to do besides raising that dental floss. Lonely, indeed…