Montana Passes Laughably Unconstitutional Law Banning TikTok

On Friday, Montana's very silly legislature passed the first law in the nation banning Tiktok. The bill's title is not subtle: SB 419: Ban tik-tok in Montana (they couldn't even get the name right).

The way the bill works is that it prohibits mobile app stores from offering TikTok to Montana residents and also just flat out says TikTok can't operate here."

Tiktok may not operate within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana

It then bans the ability to download TikTok, saying it violates the law if anyone provides:

the option to download the tiktok mobile application by a mobile application store

The wording of the bill makes you wonder if the people who drafted it learned how to create laws by watching TikTok videos, rather than in learning how to draft laws. It's also just chock full of moral panic nonsense:

WHEREAS, TikTok fails to remove, and may even promote, dangerous content that directs minors to engage in dangerous activities, including but not limited to throwing objects at moving automobiles, taking excessive amounts of medication, lighting a mirror on fire and then attempting to extinguish it using only one's body parts, inducing unconsciousness through oxygen deprivation, cooking chicken in NyQuil, pouring hot wax on a user's face, attempting to break an unsuspecting passerby's skull by tripping him or her into landing face first into a hard surface, placing metal objects in electrical outlets, swerving cars at high rates of speed, smearing human feces on toddlers, licking doorknobs and toilet seats to place oneself at risk of contracting coronavirus, attempting to climb stacks of milkcrates, shooting passersby with air rifles, loosening lug nuts on vehicles, and stealing utilities from public places

This is literally a list of moral panicky nonsense based on often false reports about TikTok challenges (frequently spread by adults, not kids, or when done by kids set up as jokes to freak out parents). And while it claims TikTok fails to remove" these, TikTok actually has a strong record of removing the few that do actually exist.

This bill is so ridiculously unconstitutional that everyone who voted for it should be kicked out of the legislature and sent back to remedial Constitution 101."

First off, it's a clear bill of attainder, which is explicitly barred by the Constitution.

Second, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of TikTok, in that it's no different than the government banning a magazine from printing in the state, or seizing their printing press.

Third, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of app store operators, who have the right to determine what they do and don't distribute.

Fourth, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of users of TikTok who want to use the app to communicate with others.

Fifth, it violates the the Dormant Commerce Clause in regulating interstate commerce.

Montana's Attorney General, Austin Knudsen (who is said to have written the bill), defended the bill in the NY Times, and in doing so hilariously only gave more ammunition to the bill's (correct) critics.

Mr. Knudsen, a Republican, said his team had received scores of complaints from parents about TikTok content referring to drugs, suicide or pornography. As the state's legislative session approached this year, his office began looking at the idea of fully banning the app.

In other words, Mr. Knudsen, who will now have to defend this law in court, just flat out admitted that he wrote this bill to shut down 1st Amendment protected communication. Talking about drugs, suicide, and pornography are all protected 1st Amendment activity, dude. Admitting that you're silencing this app because you don't like the content on it gives up the entire ball game.

Also, as Rianna Pfefferkorn notes in Wired, all this does is have the US mimic China, the very country we keep being told is the reason we need to ban TikTok, in order to not be influenced by it and become like it.

It's a maddening irony that American legislators' idea for countering China is to act more like China, home of the Great Firewall that censors its citizens' free access to the flow of information," Stanford's Pfefferkorn says. Banning a popular social media app, especially on the basis of speculative concerns, is directly contrary to the vision of a free and open internet that the US has long promulgated abroad as part of our commitment to democracy."

This law is going to get tossed out. This is literally Montana's AG and legislature choosing to waste taxpayer money in pursuit of some moral panic.

Montana residents deserve elected leaders who don't shit on the Constitution.