US government appeals order blocking TikTok restrictions

The US Department of Justice appealed an order from a federal judge that prevented the Department of Commerce from imposing restrictions on the short video sharing app TikTok, which would effectively prohibit its use in the United States.

The Washington District Judge Carl Nichols (Carl Nichols) issued an order on December 7 to prevent the Commerce Department’s ban on TikTok from taking effect, which prohibits users from downloading the app from the US App Store. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice appealed Nichols’ decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, DC Circuit.

Previously, Pennsylvania District Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued an injunction in October to block the same restrictions that the Department of Commerce had originally scheduled to take effect on November 12. In this case, three content creators argued that the TikTok ban would have a negative impact on their income. Another US Court of Appeals will retry the case in February next year.

Officials familiar with the matter said that it is increasingly unlikely that US government agencies will determine the fate of TikTok in the United States before Trump leaves office on January 20. They also said that the possibility of reaching an agreement in January next year is also very small.

In another ruling in September, Nichols issued an order to prevent the Ministry of Commerce from requiring Apple and Google to remove the TikTok app from their respective app stores. A U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington heard the government’s appeal against the ruling two weeks ago.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration chose not to approve TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, once again extending the President’s request for an August order that required Bytedance to divest TikTok’s American assets. This gives the US Department of Justice the right to enforce the divestiture order after the deadline.

In a recent interview, Jeffrey Rosen, then US Attorney General, declined to say whether the agency would seek to enforce the order. Since then, Rosen has become the acting attorney general of the United States.

Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has been in negotiations with Walmart and Oracle for several months to finalize the transfer of TikTok US assets to the new entity TikTok Global.