A group of WeChat users asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from imposing a ban on what they say appears to be all uses of the Chinese messaging app in the US over national security concerns.[LOS ANGELES] A group of WeChat users asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from imposing a ban on what they say appears to be all uses of the Chinese messaging app in the US over national security concerns.
In a complaint filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco, Chinese-American lawyers who formed the US WeChat Users Alliance claim President Donald Trump's planned restriction on the app is unconstitutional. His Aug 6 order bans Americans from carrying out transactions with WeChat and TikTok, another Chinese social-media platform, as of mid-SeptembeR.
The"vaguely worded" executive order doesn't define what transactions will be prohibited and leaves individuals and companies at a loss whether they will violate the president's order if they don't fundamentally change the way they communicate or run their businesses, according to the lawyers. They linked the president's order with his comments critical of China in recent months, including blaming it for the coronavirus pandemic.
"Neither the Executive Order itself nor the White House provided concrete evidence to support the contention that using WeChat in the United States compromises national security," the group said in the complaint."The Executive Order was, however, issued in the midst of the 2020 election cycle, during a time when President Trump has made numerous anti-Chinese statements that have contributed to and incited racial animus against persons of Chinese descent.
They claim Mr Trump's order violates WeChat users' free speech rights as well as their due process rights because it doesn't provide notice of the specific conduct that is prohibited.