WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has issued an injunction against President Donald Trump's executive order effectively banning the Chinese social media app WeChat from operating in the United States after midnight Sunday, presenting at least a temporary setback in the president's efforts to block an app that he has labeled a national security threat.
The ruling, which came Sunday morning, will temporarily halt Trump's efforts to bar WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese company Tencent Holdings, from carrying out commercial transactions in the United States. The Trump administration has said the app offers China a conduit to collect data on Americans and to censor the news and information shared by WeChat's more than 1 billion monthly active users.
In her decision, Judge Laurel Beeler of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said she had chosen to grant the motion because the plaintiffs raised serious questions about whether the order would harm First Amendment rights. She also said it placed significant hardship on the plaintiffs, who argued that it would shut down the primary means of communication for the Chinese community.
The U.S. government could now appeal to the 9th Circuit court to seek to overturn the stay. A Justice Department spokesperson said Sunday that the department is reviewing the order.
The motion for a preliminary injunction was filed Aug. 27 by the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance, a nonprofit group whose trustees include several prominent Chinese American lawyers. The group said it has no connection to Tencent Holdings or any of its affiliates.
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The alliance has argued that Trump's attempt to ban WeChat violates several constitutional provisions, including the right to free speech, due process and equal protection against arbitrary discrimination.
In a statement, the group called the ruling "an important and hard-fought victory" against an order that was "a serious violation of the Constitutional rights of WeChat users in the U.S."
WeChat has been downloaded nearly 22 million times in the United States since 2014, or about 7% of its downloads outside China.
The injunction is the latest twist in an increasingly aggressive confrontation between the United States and China over which country will dominate the global technology landscape.
The Trump administration has taken aim at Chinese tech and telecom companies, including WeChat, TikTok and Huawei, claiming they are beholden to the Chinese government and pose a national security threat. In part, the administration has pointed to a 2017 Chinese law that requires Chinese companies to support, provide assistance and cooperate in China's national intelligence work, wherever they operate.
"What this shows is that in the American system, there are still limits to how much the executive branch can unilaterally influence and control private-sector businesses," said Geoffrey Gertz, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, calling it a "key difference from China."
"Although the Trump administration is clearly trying to push these limits, it is still constrained," Gertz said. "Businesses have channels for pushing back, such as through the court system, that aren't necessarily available in other places like China."