Judge upholds Texas TikTok ban on government devices

A federal judge in Texas on Monday upheld a ban that prevented government employees from using TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video app, on government devices and networks, rejecting an challenge from attorneys who argued the ban violated the First Amendment.

The ban was challenged in July by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. The institute filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, whose members include Texas college professors who said their work was undermined after they were denied access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi and university-issued computers.

In his decision, Judge Robert L. Pitman of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas said he agreed that the ban had prevented public university faculty from using state-provided devices and networks to conduct research on and teach about TikTok, but found it was a “reasonable restriction” in light of Texas’ data privacy concerns.

Texas had limited the scope of the ban to state employees, he wrote, and there were “numerous other ways that state employees, including faculty at public universities, could access TikTok, such as on their personal devices.”

Judge Pitman also noted that the TikTok ban in Texas was more limited than a statewide ban in Montana that was set to take effect next year until a federal judge temporarily blocked it.

Universities in more than two dozen states have banned TikTok in some form, according to the Knight First Amendment Institute, based on new rules from lawmakers who say TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses a national security threat.

The institute, which works pro bono on free speech cases, wants Texas and other states to exempt university teachers from the ban.

Lawmakers in the United States, Europe and Canada have escalated efforts to restrict access to TikTok over the past year, largely over concerns that TikTok and its parent company could put sensitive user data, such as location information, into the hands of the Chinese. government. They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly request data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence gathering. They also worry that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations for disinformation.

Neither the Knight First Amendment Institute nor TikTok were immediately available for comment.

Sapna Maheshwari reporting contributed.