WASHINGTON (CN) — A group of eight TikTok content creators sued U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday in a bid to block recently passed legislation that would force the application to be divested from Chinese parent-company ByteDance of be banned in the U.S.
The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, comes a week after TikTok and ByteDance filed a similar suit in which TikTok claims the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is “obviously unconstitutional.”
The eight creators who sued Tuesday represent a wide range of content on the platform used by over 170 million Americans. They push back against lawmakers’ supposed national security concerns that led to the law’s passage and say TikTok has greatly improved their lives.
Plaintiff Brian Firebaugh, a first-generation rancher from Hubbard, Texas, describes in the complaint how he uses TikTok to post about agricultural issues and promote his ranch’s products. His account, known as “Cattle Guy,” has 430,000 followers and he earns income through the TikTok Creator Fund which allows creators to make money from viral videos.
According to TikTok, the fund typically pays between $20 and $40 for 1 million views.
Firebaugh claims his success on the app has allowed him to pursue ranching full-time and even participate in a Netflix game show “The Trust,” where his winnings enabled him and his wife to adopt their son.
If TikTok is banned in the U.S., Firebaugh says he would need to get a different job and pay for day care rather than raising his son at home.
“If you ban TikTok, you ban my way of life,” Firebaugh says in the complaint.
Since the passage of the law, he has suffered a steep decline in new followers on the app.
Chloe Joy Sexton, a young mother and baker from Memphis, Tennessee, started creating videos after losing her job in 2020, while raising her newborn child and caring for her mother with brain cancer.
Through her TikTok account, ChloeBluffCakes, she gained over 2.2 million followers, was able to open a cookie company, publish a cookbook and now ships thousands of cookies around the globe.
The remaining six creators include: Talia Cadet, a book reviewer from Capitol Heights, Maryland; and Timothy Martin, a college football coach in Mayville, North Dakota; Kiera Spann, a recent college graduate from Charlotte, North Carolina; Paul Tran, founder of a skincare line from Atlanta, Georgia; Christopher Townsend, an Air Force veteran from Philadelphia, Mississippi; and Steven King, an LGBTQ creator from Buckeye, Arizona.
Each plaintiff details in the suit how creating videos on TikTok provided them with new business opportunities — such as appearances on “Shark Tank” and “The Today Show” by Tran — as well as promote their creative work, advocate for certain issues and connect with like-minded users.
The creators note that TikTok has also become a platform for political advocacy and debate — pointing out that President Joe Biden, Senator Ed Markey and Senator Jacky Rosen have accounts — across the political spectrum.
TikTok has become a frequent target by Republicans and Democrats in Congress who express concern that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a threat to American democracy.
In a May 3 forum with the McCain Institute in Arizona, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the potential ban and its ties to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
Romney suggested that the ban and lawmakers’ bipartisan support for it — the bill passed 79-18 in the Senate — was due to “overwhelming support” for Palestine among young people on the app.
The creators argued that such positions center on censoring TikTok’s algorithm.
“Without any evidence, certain congress members created a fiction that TikTok curates content to push propaganda and ‘drive certain messages to divide Americans, to destabilize our politics, to influence policy makers to denigrate policymakers, and to tear our country apart,’” the creators said.
The creators want the D.C. Circuit to declare the law unconstitutional and a violation of their First Amendment rights and to bar Garland from enforcing the act.
They are represented by Ambika Kumbar and others from Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle and Jeffrey Fisher from O’Melveny & Myers in Menlo Park, California.