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TikTok is taking its fight against the Trump administration to the courts, saying it will file a legal challenge Monday against the government’s order to ban the video app effective mid-September.
TikTok alleges Trump's executive order is "not rooted in bona fide national security concerns," according to excerpts of the complaint the company detailed in a blog post. It also alleges the U.S. government did not conduct a fair process in deciding that the app needed to be banned in the country and that its Chinese owner ByteDance must divest its assets in the U.S.
It said it plans to file the suit later Monday in federal court in the Central District of California.
President Trump cited national security concerns as he issued an executive order on Aug. 6 banning the app in the U.S. after 45 days. It would be the first time a major consumer app is banned in the country using international emergency economic powers.
The order put pressure on deal talks already in progress for ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok to Microsoft, Twitter or another American company. Microsoft, considered the leading suitor for the short-form video app, has said it will complete its deal talks with TikTok by Sept. 15.
TikTok has been engaged in a wide-reaching public relations campaign all year to convince U.S. customers and regulators that it is not a threat. It has continually insisted that it does not share information about U.S. users with the Chinese government, and even hired former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its CEO here.
But Trump and other lawmakers have raised concerns that TikTok could pose a national security threat because of the control China exerts over companies based there, raising fears that the company could one day be compelled to hand over customer information.
In its lawsuit, TikTok says it stores American user info in the U.S. and Singapore, and points to the "extraordinary measures" it says it has taken to protect user privacy.
"By banning TikTok with no notice or opportunity to be heard (whether before or after the fact), the executive order violates the due process protections of the Fifth Amendment," TikTok's order reads, according to excerpts in the blog post.
TikTok can sue to challenge the underlying process of the executive order, but not the merits of the decision itself, said Robert Chesney, an associate dean at the University of Texas School of Law.
"This is why TikTok is in a tough spot, unless the game is just delay," Chesney said of a potential lawsuit.
Trump issued a second order on Aug. 14, ordering ByteDance to divest its 2017 acquisition of an app called Musical.ly, which later merged with TikTok. In its lawsuit, TikTok alleges the government process that led to that order was completed five minutes before its deadline on July 30 after a months-long review.
The decision was "principally based on outdated news articles, failed to address the voluminous documentation that Plaintiffs had provided demonstrating the security of TikTok user data, and was flawed in numerous other respects," TikTok wrote in its lawsuit, according to the blog.
TikTok says it has more than 100 million users in the U.S., and is especially popular with teens and young adults. Facebook referred to TikTok as one of its leading competitors in an antitrust hearing before Congress last month. It recently released Instagram Reels, a video feature in its photo app designed to rival TikTok.