TikTok has sued the U.S. government, accusing it of trampling on its First Amendment rights when legislation was signed into law forcing its Chinese parent company to sell the social media platform or face a national ban.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, marks the most momentous challenge to the governments forceful rebuke of a Chinese firms ownership of the leading video-sharing app in America alleged to hoover up troves of data. It sets up whats expected to be a lengthy legal battle pitting national security concerns against free speech protections for the company and millions of users. If upheld, TikTok says the law will allow the government to circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security, with the aim of cornering websites or publishers into selling to avoid being shut down. It calls the ban obviously unconstitutional and warns the divestiture demanded by the legislation to continue operating in the U.S. is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.

Government officials and lawmakers have repeatedly said TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, poses a national security threat. Thus far, theyve offered no evidence that TikTok has provided user data to the Chinese government or that its been directed to influence the content users see on the platform. Much of the information that it collects can be bought from third party data brokers. Amid years of congressional infighting to ban the app, lawmakers have failed to pass comprehensive data privacy legislation that would protect all users from companies that indiscriminately amass all kinds of personal information on consumers.

In a statement, the company said, Today we filed a petition in federal court seeking to overturn the unconstitutional TikTok ban.

Under the law, TikTok has roughly nine months to divest from ByteDance. It allows President Joe Biden to extend the window by an additional 90 days if significant progress has been made toward a sale. If the Chinese company cannot or refuses to sell, web-hosting services and mobile app stores would be barred from carrying the app, which amounts to an effective national ban.

With more than 150 million American monthly active users, the app has been integrated into American culture to an extraordinary degree. Its by far the leading video-sharing app in America in terms of attracting and holding users attention. TikToks immense popularity has ignited calls from users and influencers to lawmakers urging them not to ban the app.

In response to national security concerns, the company partnered with Oracle to move its data on users stored on foreign servers to Texas, essentially firewalling the data the Chinese government could collect. The initiative, called Project Texas, includes audits of its algorithms and creating a subsidiary called TikTok U.S. Data Security to oversee content moderation policies and approve editorial decisions. American employees will report to an independent board of directors.

National security and censorship concerns allegedly posed by TikTok arent unique to the company. Metas Facebook was used to incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after data from the app was weaponized in 2016 to influence the presidential election in the so-called Cambridge Analytica scandal. YouTubes rules have been manipulated to silence Kazakh dissidents and human rights observers in China.

Direct challenges to government actions at the TikTok lawsuits scale are few and far in between. Some courts have expressed skepticism at alleged national security concerns invoked by the government in the absence of direct evidence of potential harm. In New York Times Co. v. United States, a federal judge found that the publication could publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers, which detailed Americas political and military involvement in Vietnam, without censorship or punishment from the government. The court concluded that the word security is a broad, vague generatality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied by the First Amendment.

In another case finding that free speech rights arent subordinate to national security concerns, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a law delaying mail that contained communist political proganda. The upshot of that ruling was that Americans are within their rights to consume foreign propaganda.

Other courts have deferred to the government when national security is at stake. In 2020, the government helped convince a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling against Qualcomm that wouldve forced it to overhaul its licensing business for violating antitrust laws. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals preserved Qualcomms monopoly in the mobile chip market, finding the company has no duty to license its patents to rivals.

In that case, the Department of Justice stepped in at the eleventh hour to oppose the FTC on the grounds that any fix weakening Qualcomms position in the burgeoning 5G market threatened national security since it competes against Huawei, a Chinese-owned firm that sells smartphones and other gear that make up the backbone of the telecom network. The intervention by prosecutors directly undercut regulators most momentous enforcement victory in decades.

China would likely compete robustly to fill any void left by Qualcomm should Qualcomms ability to invest and innovate be diminished, stated Ellen Lord, then the under secretary of defense, in a court declaration. Participation and leadership in 5G standard setting is a zero-sum game if the United States does not lead, an aggressive, eager China will set standards to accommodate its own wishes.

Antitrust concerns also come into play with the proposed sale of TikTok. With a price tag in the billions of dollars, the only firms that can afford to buy the company would likely present competition issues to regulators. The Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice would almost certainly sue to block any social media firm that buys TikTok.

Other concerns with the law include the creation of a mechanism by which the White House can target other entities deemed to be a national security threat. In those instances, the president is required to issue a report describing the specific concerns justifying the ban. Some critics have posited that foreign news sites, such as The Guardian or Qatari-funded Al Jazeera, could be targeted by future administrations.