A US federal judge has approved a request from a group of US WeChat users to delay looming federal government restrictions that could effectively make the popular app nearly impossible to use in the US.
In a ruling dated on Saturday, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said that the government’s actions would affect users’ First Amendment rights, as an effective ban on the app would remove their platform for communication.
WeChat is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.
The group of WeChat users requested an injunction after the US Department of Commerce on Friday said that it would bar WeChat from US app stores and keep it from accessing essential Internet services in the country beginning on Sunday at 11:59pm.
They argued that the prohibitions would violate the free-speech rights of millions of Chinese-speaking Americans who rely on it.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted WeChat and another app, TikTok, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, for national security and data privacy concerns.
The administration contends that the data of US users collected by the two apps could be shared with the Chinese government.
On Saturday, Trump said that he supported a proposed deal that would have TikTok partner with Oracle and WalMart to form a US company.
There is still a chance that TikTok could be banned in the US as of Nov. 12 if the deal is not completed, under the restrictions put in place by the US Department of Commerce.
However, a restriction to bar TikTok from app stores in the US, similar to what WeChat faced, was pushed back a week to Sunday after Trump backed the latest TikTok deal.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday told Fox News that the government would ensure that under the TikTok-Oracle-WalMart deal, no American’s data would end up in the possession of the Chinese government.
In the WeChat case, the users said that the moves targeting the all-in-one app with instant-messaging, social media and other communication tools would restrict free speech.
WeChat “serves as a virtual public square for the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-American community in the United States and is [as a practical matter] their only means of communication,” Beeler wrote in the ruling, dated Saturday and released early on Sunday.
Effectively banning it “forecloses meaningful access to communication in their community and thereby operates as a prior restraint on their right to free speech,” she wrote.
“Certainly the government’s overarching national-security interest is significant,” she wrote. “But on this record — while the government has established that China’s activities raise significant national security concerns — it has put in scant little evidence that its effective ban of WeChat for all US users addresses those concerns,” she wrote.
The US government earlier said that it would not be restricting free speech because WeChat users still “are free to speak on alternative platforms that do not pose a national security threat.”
The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the injunction.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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