This places a halt on the ban placed by the Trump administration, which was scheduled to begin on Sunday at midnight
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A federal judge on Sunday granted a preliminary injunction against a Trump administration order to ban the viral video app TikTok from U.S. app stores, in a reprieve for the Chinese-owned service.
The injunction halts only the element of the ban that was scheduled to take effect Sunday at midnight, which would have forced TikTok off app stores run by companies like Apple and Google. It does not cover a broader set of restrictions set to take effect in November “at this time,” the judge, Carl Nichols of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in his order.
The government had argued that the measures were responding to fears that the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could send data back to authorities in Beijing. A Justice Department official, Daniel Schwei, said that TikTok’s “First Amendment rights are not implicated” by the ban.
Lawyers for the app told Nichols in a hearing Sunday morning that forcing online stores to remove the app weeks before an election — and at a time of increased isolation because of the pandemic — would impinge on the rights of potential new users to share their views. TikTok had sought the preliminary injunction to temporarily halt the ban.
A ban would “be no different from the government locking the doors to a public forum,” said John Hall, a lawyer for TikTok.
©2019 New York Times News Service