Citing “a profound effect on American life,” a group of TikTok producers filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court on Tuesday, attempting to thwart a bill signed by President Joe Biden that would require the divestment of the 170 million-user app or outright prohibit it.

A Texas Marine Corps veteran who sells ranch products, a Tennessee woman who talks about parenting while selling cookies, a college coach from North Dakota who makes sports commentary videos, a Mississippi hip-hop artist who posts Bible quizzes and a recent North Carolina college graduate who supports the rights of sexual assault survivors are among the TikTok users who are suing.

“Although they come from different places, professions, walks of life, and political persuasions, they are united in their view that TikTok provides them a unique and irreplaceable means to express themselves and form community,” said the lawsuit.

The inventors’ legal team, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, sent Reuters a copy of the case, which it said was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The White House remained silent. The TikTok rule “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner that is consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations,” according to a representative for the Justice Department. We anticipate filing a legal defence against the Act.”

According to the lawsuit, which is asking for an injunction, the legislation “promises to shutter a discrete medium of communication that has become part of American life” and threatens free expression.

TikTok and its Chinese parent firm ByteDance filed a similar complaint last week, claiming that the rule is unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution on several grounds, including violating the First Amendment’s rights of free expression.

The developers of TikTok sued in 2020 to overturn an earlier effort by then-President Donald Trump to ban the app, and they fought again in Montana last year to get a state ban overturned. The bans were overturned by courts in both cases.

Since then, Trump has changed his mind and opposed attempts to outlaw TikTok, even though he hasn’t downloaded the app.

Biden signed the bill on April 24. ByteDance has until January 19 to sell TikTok or risk being banned. For reasons of national security, the White House has stated that it is in favour of ending Chinese control, but not outright banning TikTok.

The rule forbids internet hosting companies from sponsoring TikTok and forbids app shops like Apple and Alphabet’s Google from selling TikTok until ByteDance divests TikTok.

The complaint filed by the founders stated “because TikTok currently has approximately 170 million users in the United States, the fine for continuing to enable access to TikTok would be roughly $850 billion.”

If the government is right to argue that the statute is necessary to safeguard the data of Americans, the lawsuit asserts that “it has tried that strategy before and lost.”

The complaint contends that “the concerns are speculative, and even if they were not, they could be addressed with legislation much more narrowly tailored to any purported concern.”

Last Thursday, the TikTok lawsuit said that the divestment “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally… There is no question: the Act (law) will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025.”

Just a few weeks after it was announced, the legislation was enacted by Congress with overwhelming support, fueled by concerns expressed by American politicians that China may use the app to access American data or spy on them.

A major battleground in the continuing dispute between the United States and China over technology and the internet is the four-year war over TikTok. Apple announced in April that it had received an order from China to remove Threads and WhatsApp from Meta Platform’s App Store due to national security concerns in China.

If Biden thinks ByteDance is moving forward, he may decide to extend the deadline until January 19 by three months. The lawsuit from the creators mentions that Biden’s campaign makes use of TikTok, citing the deputy manager of the campaign as saying that it “would be silly to write off any place where people are getting information about the president.”

(Adapted from LiveMint.com)