Court temporarily blocks US ban on TikTok downloads

In an emergency hearing, the US District Court for the District of Columbia has issued preliminary injunction against the executive order of President Donald Trump blocking app stores from allowing any new downloads of or updates to TikTok. The second part of the executive order scheduled to go into effect 12 November blocking US services from supporting TikTok (no optimization, no CDNs, no peering) and from using TikTok’s API was not subject to the injunction.

According to the Washington Post, the judge said that ‘this was a largely a unilateral decision with very little opportunity for plaintiffs to be heard’.

A TikTok spokesperson issued a statement that TikTok is pleased with the court decision. The US Department of Commerce published a statement saying that ‘the [US] Government will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so, but intends to vigorously defend the Executive Order and the Secretary’s implementation efforts from legal challenges’.