Montana and Florida face lawsuits for free speech restriction and anti-Chinese discrimination

Two lawsuits claiming discriminatory action against Chinese people and entities have been lodged against the American states of Florida and Montana.

TikTok vs. Montana

TikTok has filed a lawsuit against Montana just days after the state passed a bill to ban the ByteDance-owned social media app, due to take effect on January 1, 2024. Montana is the first U.S. state to ban the short-video-sharing platform, which claims to have more than 150 million American users and is particularly popular with teenagers and users in their twenties.

On May 17, Governor Greg Gianforte (R) signed the Montana Senate Bill SB 419 into law, which prohibits downloads of TikTok in the state. Under the ban, any “entity” — such as app stores run by Google or Apple, or even TikTok itself — would be fined $10,000 per day each time someone is able to access the social media platform or download the app. The penalties would not apply to users, nor would it ban people who already have TikTok from using it.

“The Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok as a tool to spy on Americans by collecting personal information, keystrokes, and even the locations of its users,” Emily Flower, a spokesperson for the Montana Department of Justice, said in a statement per TIME.

In response, TikTok argued in the lawsuit that the ban violates the constitutional right to free speech and is based on “unfounded speculation” that the Chinese government could access users’ data. “We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts.”

It follows a similar lawsuit filed by five Montanan TikTok content creators hours after the bill was passed.

TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, has faced growing accusations in the U.S. of being a national security risk. Despite the company’s lobbying campaigns on Capitol Hill and the fact that it is mostly owned by Americans, ByteDance is struggling to convince U.S. lawmakers that TikTok is safe, or American enough. Calls to purge TikTok from the country have been growing since 2020, when then president Donald Trump attempted to ban the company from operating in the U.S. through an executive order. It was halted in federal courts.

Many officials in Washington have since voiced concerns that Beijing could legally require TikTok to hand over American users’ data, or that Chinese officials could push their political agendas through the platform’s content.

Both TikTok and the Chinese government have repeatedly denied that those claims hold any weight. “The U.S. has yet to produce any evidence to prove that TikTok is a threat to U.S. national security, but it has been suppressing the company based on presumption of guilt,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on May 23 when asked by reporters about the lawsuit. (It’s not clear, however, if such protestations from Chinese officials help or harm ByteDance’s case.)

In March, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Chew (周受资 Zhōu Shòuzī), testified before a U.S. House committee with a slew of promises to safeguard “minor safety, data privacy and security, real-world harms from online activities, and the risk of foreign content manipulation” on the platform. But his pleas failed to convince the growing voices in Washington not to ban the app from the country.

Chinese citizens vs. Florida

Meanwhile, in Florida, three Chinese citizens and a real estate brokerage — Yifan Shen, Zhiming Xu, Xinxi Wang (Chinese characters unknown), and Multi-Choice Realty LLC — have filed a lawsuit against the state to overturn a new property law that will bar citizens of China and several other countries from owning homes and land in some parts of the state. It is set to go into effect on July 1.

Florida’s new law, SB 264, will prohibit citizens of China, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea from purchasing properties within 10 miles of military installations or any “critical infrastructure facility,” as well as agricultural land. Those who fall under the law but purchased their properties before July 1 will be required to register with the state. Individuals holding non-tourist visas or who have been granted asylum will receive exemptions, though they will still be restricted from buying more than two acres of land or anything within five miles of military installations.

However, sales to Chinese citizens face the harshest penalties under the new law: It will be a felony for Chinese citizens to buy property in restricted areas, and for any person or entity to knowingly sell to restricted people. For the citizens of other nations listed, penalties for those same exchanges will only amount to a misdemeanor.

Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who yesterday launched his 2024 presidential run in a Twitter audio event with Elon Musk, was the main champion of Florida’s new property restrictions, signing it into law on May 8. He defended the property law and two similar bills aimed at restricting China’s influence in education and data storage: “I signed the strongest legislation in the nation to stop the influence of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said on Twitter after the signing.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs, claimed that the law is discriminatory against people of Asian descent and “will have the net effect of creating ‘Chinese exclusion zones.’” It also stokes racial biases against Chinese Americans, while undermining their financial freedom. “This impact is exactly what laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the California Alien Land Law of 1913 did more than a hundred years ago,” the lawsuit stated.

“This misguided rationale unfairly equates Chinese people with the actions of their government, and there is no evidence of national security harm resulting from real estate ownership by Chinese people in Florida,” the ACLU said in a press release. More than a dozen state legislatures have introduced similar bills — many of them targeting people from China, the ACLU added.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), another entity representing the plaintiffs, said in a press release that the restrictions would “cast an undue burden of suspicion on anyone seeking to buy property whose name sounds remotely Asian, Russian, Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan, or Syrian.”