Montana asks judge to allow TikTok ban to take effect while legal challenge moves through courts

abcnews.go.com:

Montana is asking a federal judge to allow its law banning new downloads of TikTok to take effect while a legal challenge filed by the company and five content creators moves through the courts

HELENA, Mont. — Montana is asking a federal judge to allow its law banning new downloads of the video-sharing app TikTok to take effect in January while a challenge filed by the company and five content creators is decided by the courts.

The state filed its response Friday to the plaintiffs' motion in July that asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy to temporarily prevent the law from being implemented until the courts can rule on whether it amounts to an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen had the bill drafted over concerns — shared by the FBI and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — that the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could be used to allow the Chinese government to access information on U.S. citizens or push pro-Beijing misinformation that could influence the public. TikTok has said none of this has ever happened.

The federal government and more than half the U.S. states, including Montana, have banned TikTok from being used on government-owned devices.

“The federal government has already determined that China is a foreign adversary. And the concerns with TikTok are well documented at both the state and federal level," the brief said. The Montana law, «therefore, furthers the public interest because it protects the public from the harms inseparable from TikTok’s operation.”

Disallowing Montana's regulation of TikTok would be like preventing the state from banning a cancer-causing radio “merely because that radio also transmitted protected speech,»