Mont. Lawmakers Ban TikTok for Everyone in State

NetChoice urged veto after Montana’s legislature Friday passed a bill to ban TikTok for everyone in the state. The Senate voted 54-43 for SB-419. The bill, which requires a signature from Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) to become law, would ban the social media platform from operating in Montana and ban mobile app stores from making TikTok available for download. The bill was amended before passage to remove an initially proposed restriction on ISPs allowing the service. Entities would have to pay $100,000 for each discrete violation and would be liable for another $10,000 for each day afterward that the violation continued. If signed, the Montana measure would take effect Jan. 1. Gianforte “should veto this plainly unconstitutional bill,” NetChoice General Counsel Carl Szabo said. Previous state TikTok bans were limited to government equipment. SB-419 would set “a dangerous precedent that the government can ban any business it doesn’t like without clear evidence of wrongdoing,” he said. NetChoice cited the Constitution’s Article I prohibition on bills of attainder that allow the government to punish a specific entity without formal trial. Also, the proposed law would violate the First Amendment by restricting people from sharing and receiving speech, it said.