This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

I have previously discussed the First Amendment implications of a potential TikTok ban. Removing TikTok from US markets implicates not just the speech rights of TikTok US—an American subsidiary of China-based ByteDance—but also those of its 170 million American users, many of whom actively create content on the platform. To prevail, the government must demonstrate that the ban furthers an important governmental interest unrelated to free expression and that it does not substantially burden more speech than necessary to achieve that interest. The latter is particularly challenging, which is why courts enjoined earlier bans on TikTok and WeChat.