Texas Judge Upholds TikTok Ban on State-Owned Devices

A US Federal judge upheld Texas' decision to ban the TikTok app on all the official state-owned devices, a decision marking another success for the US to ban the Chinese-based app.

Western District Judge Robert L. Pitman rejected the petition of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, calling the ban "a reasonable restriction on access to TikTok in light of Texas's concerns."

Texas District Court Rules in Favor of State Ban

The petition, filed in July this year, reasoned that the ban's extension to public university employees impedes academic freedom and hinders professors from using the app for research.

Pitman reasoned that both employees and students are still free to use the app on their personal devices.

The resolution came a month after another judge rejected a petition in Montana to fully ban the video-sharing app across the state, supposedly the first in the country if implemented.

TikTok has yet to respond to the decision.

US States Call for TikTok Ban for Security Reasons

Texas and Montana are not the states that actively called to ban the app in their respective states.

New York was the first state to ban TikTok on all government devices in 2020. Florida soon followed by signing a bill that prohibits devices from accessing the app on school Wi-Fi.

So far, only Montana's full ban was rejected from implementation as it was considered to be violating "the Constitution in more ways than one."

Despite different approaches, the states claim security concerns on using the app may be secretly providing user data to the Chinese government, which is currently at odds with the US and its allies.

The bans are mostly on public and government devices, most personal devices are still able to access the platform freely.

In fact, TikTok is among the most used social media apps by teenagers across America.