A US federal judge on Friday issued an order temporarily blocking an executive order by President Donald Trump aimed at banning the video-sharing app TikTok, AFP reported. This has thrown up a legal roadblock ahead of the November 12 deadline.
The executive order signed by Trump in August gave a 90-days deadline to China’s ByteDance to divest from the assets of TikTok in the US and find an American buyer for the operations of the video-sharing platform in the country.
ByteDance is the Chinese tech firm that owns TikTok.
The order would have knocked the Chinese-owned video-sharing app offline by cutting it off from US businesses providing website hosting, data storage and other fundamentals needed to operate.
However, TikTok users sued the President, AFP reported.
With the injunction issued on Friday, federal judge Wendy Beetlestone has temporarily blocked the order.
It is the second restraint issued in favor of TikTok by US judges against a set of executive orders issued by Trump which sought to ban new downloads of the app beginning in September, and ban it outright by November 12.
A temporary injunction issued in September in a separate suit filed by TikTok itself prevented the government from removing it from mobile application download platforms.
Judges in both cases said in rulings that the chances of proving in court that Trump overstepped his authority were good.
They also equated TikTok to films, photographs, and news wires with legal protections.
Beetlestone noted in her ruling that concerns expressed by the US in justifying the ban were expressed hypothetically.
Trump’s administration has insisted on a need to ban TikTok, which has 100 million users in the US, due to national security concerns.
The White House claims TikTok has links to the Chinese government through its parent firm ByteDance.
TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data transfers to the Chinese government.
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It says its servers where user information is stored are located in the United States and Singapore.
The company has also said the ban is unnecessary since negotiations are underway to restructure the ownership of TikTok to address national security issues raised by the administration.
Also read: TikTok announces deal with e-commerce giant amid US scrutiny
A tentative deal has been unveiled that would make Silicon Valley giant Oracle the technology partner for TikTok and a stakeholder in a new entity to be known as TikTok Global.
