Photo Credit: Steven Cordes
Montana has passed legislation that could make it the first U.S. state to completely ban TikTok.
Lawmakers in Montana’s House voted 54-43 to give their final approval to the bill. If Governor Greg Gianforte signs the bill into law, it will take effect January 2024. If the bill is passed, it could face significant legal challenges. The legislation names TikTok and says the company could face penalties of $10,000 per violation per day it remains operational. Those penalties would also apply to any app store making TikTok available to Montana citizens. There is no penalty for individual citizens continuing to use TikTok.
“The bill’s champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill’s constitutionality will be decided by the courts,” adds a TikTok spokesperson about the Montana bill. “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”
So will the Montana governor sign the bill into law? “The governor will carefully consider any bill the legislature sends to his desk,” says Brooke Stroyke, a spokesperson for the governor. In December 2022, Gianforte banned TikTok on state government devices while urging the Montana University system to follow suit. Several state governments and universities across the United States have issued similar bans.
The United States military has banned TikTok on government devices since 2019—starting with the Navy. The Army soon followed and then bans on devices U.S. Congressmen followed. While these are bans on government devices, there remain no restrictions on personal devices.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has expressed concerns about the amount of data TikTok collects about U.S. citizens and the ability to geolocate citizens based on that data. He has also expressed concerns about the type of content that could be censored on the ByteDance-owned platform.