• Five TikTok creators from Montana are suing the government following the app’s ban earlier this week.
• The creators allege that their free speech is negatively impacted by the ban as is their ability to earn money.
• Montana’s attorney general has said the state was expecting legal challenges in response to the app’s ban.

Earlier this week, Montana came to the decision to ban TikTok on the basis of the app “providing individuals’ data and information to the Chinese Community Party”.

At the same time, Governor Greg Gianforte also banned government officials from using the likes of Telegram and WeChat from 1st June.

But now creators who use the app in the state are joining forces in a lawsuit suing the government for the ban.

The lawsuit, which you can read in full here, claims that the SB 419 “attempts to excercise power over national security that Montana does not have and to ban speech Montana may not supress.

The creators that have joined the lawsuit are said to have “significant audiences who tune in by the thousands to stream and engage with their content”. Live streaming on TikTok allows creators to draw in donations and for many it’s the best way to earn money on the platform.

The creators in question are:

• Samantha Alario,
• Heather DiRocco,
• Carly Ann Goddard,
• Alice Held,
• Dale Stout.

The lawsuit goes to great lengths to detail how TikTok helps the creators and others, but it boils down to the fact that the ban negatively impacts Montana’s ability to earn money from the app. Of course, free speech also gets a mention here.

But Montanan lawmakers were prepared for a legal pushback to the law.

“There are some important issues here that I do think we probably need the federal courts to step in and answer for us here,” Montana’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News.

The AG hammered home the accusation that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance were hoovering up all sort of personal information about US citizens for the Chinese government.

The AG claimed that facial recognition data, biometric data, photographs and more were being taken by the Chinese government. No evidence of this has been made public aside from accusations paired with a “trust us, we’re the good guys” attitude.

Montana is unlikely to be the last state to try to ban access to TikTok but it was the first and the legal action it now faces will be watched by lawmakers in other states to see how it plays out.