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 legislation a first-of-its-kind invoice that might 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 enable the app to reap knowledge on its customers to be wielded for spying functions. Particularly, TikTok has change into 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 mother or father or face a federal ban.

In Monday’s lawsuit, TikTok argued that the Montana legislation 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 overseas and interstate commerce, and was in impact an unconstitutional “invoice of attainder” — a bit of laws that declares a gaggle responsible of against the law with out a trial.

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

Underneath the Montana legislation, 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 gaggle of TikTok creators filed their very own lawsuit difficult the legislation on first modification grounds.

The lawsuit units up a possible courtroom battle over free speech, even after TikTok tried to distance itself from its mother or father firm by spending greater than $1.5bn on “Undertaking Texas”, a company restructuring plan to safeguard consumer knowledge 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 homeowners 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 units within the US, UK, Canada and the EU.

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