Creators join TikTok with their own lawsuit against new U.S. law

TikTok‘s users are joining its legal battle against the United States government. Eight creators are named as the co-petitioners in a lawsuit that challenges the new Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversaries Act (PAFFAA) on first-amendment grounds.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, names U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland as its defendant. It joins existing cases filed by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, both of which have vowed to fight a law that would either ban TikTok in the United States or force ByteDance to divest its prized video app.

The creators who are challenging PAFFAA include rancher Brian Firebaugh (pictured above), BookToker Talia Cadet, and college football coach Timothy Martin. In their complaint, they argue that TikTok “provides a distinct medium for expression” that can not be found on any other social media platform. Since “content expressed through TikTok may convey a different meaning than content expressed elsewhere,” the petitioners hope to convince a judge that the government is limiting expression (and thus violating the First Amendment) by putting PAFFAA into effect.

“The Act thus promises to shutter a discrete medium of communication that has become part of American life, prohibiting Petitioners from creating and disseminating expressive material with their chosen editor and publisher—and from receiving such material from others,” reads the complaint

. “This extraordinary restraint on speech violates the First Amendment.”

For this argument to hold water, the litigious creators will need to show that the national security threat posed by TikTok does not outweigh PAFFAA’s limits on free expression. The lawsuit describes those data-related concerns as “speculative” and points to previous court cases that successfully challenged localized TikTok bans. In Montana, both TikTok and its creators sued the state after the passage of a law that applied a different regulatory mechanism but offered many of the same justifications put forth by PAFFAA’s proponents.

The creator suit shows that TikTok’s community members still rank among its strongest allies, even though prominent advocacy organizations — NetChoice, in particular — have abandoned their support for the embattled app. Perhaps, if the attempt to overturn PAFFAA in court fails, those creators will get a financial cut of TikTok. Billionaire Frank McCourt has announced his intention to put together a “people’s bid” that would allow him to acquire TikTok if ByteDance changes its mind about divesting the app.