TikTok is suing Montana in an effort to cease the US state from banning it over nationwide safety considerations, arguing the transfer is each “illegal” and “unconstitutional”.

The social media app, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, filed the lawsuit in federal courtroom on Monday, simply days after Montana’s governor signed into regulation a first-of-its-kind invoice that may from January prohibit app shops from permitting downloads of TikTok within the state. It will additionally ban the app from working within the western state, which has a inhabitants of about 1.1mn.

The proposed ban comes as governments and regulators globally have raised fears that TikTok’s China ties may permit the app to reap information on its customers to be wielded for spying functions. Specifically, TikTok has turn out to be a flashpoint in rising tensions between China and the US, the place it has 150mn customers, with Washington calling on the short-form video app to divest from its Chinese language father or mother or face a federal ban.

In Monday’s lawsuit, TikTok argued that the Montana regulation violates its first modification rights to free speech, and that the alleged nationwide safety considerations used to justify the ban had been issues of “unique federal concern”.

The corporate additionally stated that the ban was in violation of US guidelines on international and interstate commerce, and was in impact an unconstitutional “invoice of attainder” — a chunk of laws that declares a bunch responsible of against the law and not using a trial.

“The state has enacted these extraordinary and unprecedented measures primarily based on nothing greater than unfounded hypothesis,” it stated within the lawsuit.

Beneath the Montana regulation, TikTok and the app shops, comparable to Apple and Google, may face fines of $10,000 per violation per day if they don’t comply.

Final week a bunch of TikTok creators filed their very own lawsuit difficult the regulation on first modification grounds.

The lawsuit units up a possible courtroom battle over free speech, even after TikTok tried to distance itself from its father or mother firm by spending greater than $1.5bn on “Undertaking Texas”, a company restructuring plan to safeguard person information and content material from Chinese language affect.

Negotiations over the deal have stalled, nevertheless, and earlier this yr, the US authorities threatened to ban TikTok if its Chinese language house owners don’t promote their stake — a transfer that Beijing publicly opposes.

Former president Donald Trump in 2020 sought to ban the app within the US, however the try was halted by the courts. TikTok has extra just lately been banned from authorities gadgets within the US, UK, Canada and the EU.

“We’re difficult Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to guard our enterprise and the tons of of hundreds of TikTok customers in Montana,” a TikTok spokesperson stated on Monday. “We consider our authorized problem will prevail primarily based on an exceedingly sturdy set of precedents and information.”