A U.S. federal judge today temporarily blocked an executive order issued by the Trump administration that would have banned transactions with Chinese-owned social video sharing app TikTok.

The ban was meant to start at 11:59 p.m. Sunday and would have banned TikTok from U.S. app stores such as Apple Inc.’s App Store and Google LLC’s Play Store. The injunction was sought by TikTok’s owner ByteDance Ltd. as part of a lawsuit filed Aug. 24.

According to the New York Times, lawyers for ByteDance told Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that forcing online stores to remove the app weeks before an election and at a time of increased isolation from COVID-19 would impinge on the rights of potential new users to share their views. A ban would “be no different from the government locking the doors to a public forum,” one lawyer is quoted as saying.

The company went further, also arguing that the ban was unnecessary because of negotiations to restructure the ownership of TikTok to address national security issues. Those negotiations relate to a deal involving Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc. to take partial ownership in a new company to be called TikTok Global that could also be floated in an initial public offering.

Judge Nichols agreed, granting the temporary reprieve to the ban pending a further hearing into TikTok’s lawsuit. The judge did not block additional Commerce Department restrictions that are set to take effect on Nov. 12. Those restrictions still have the same net result: TikTok would be banned from U.S. stores. But it specifically refers to stores whereas the initial Trump executive order related to transactions.

Commerce issued a statement Sunday evening defending its executive order and vowing to keep up the battle. “The E.O. is fully consistent with the law and promotes legitimate national security interests,” the statement said. “The Government will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so, but intends to vigorously defend the E.O. and the Secretary’s implementation efforts from legal challenges.”

ByteDance’s overall lawsuit argues that the initial Trump executive order prevents the company from due process as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. It also argues that the order ignored the company’s efforts to prove that it does not share data with the Chinese government and is not a national security threat.

The TikTok Global deal still requires approval from the administration. Although one report Sept. 19 said that the president had signed off on the deal, a later report Sept. 21 suggested that the administration would not support a deal unless ByteDance offloaded its stake.

And so the drama continues.

Photo: Aaron Yoo/Flickr