Montana judge tosses TikTok ban lawsuit as ownership change triggers mootness
U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy dismissed a lawsuit challenging Montana’s TikTok ban after he found the case was moot under a clause in the law, according to court-related reporting published Feb. 20. The ruling closed out the legality challenge that had been tied to whether the state could bar TikTok over national-security and data-access concerns.
The ban at the center of the dispute was signed in May 2023 by Gov. Greg Gianforte and had been the first statewide effort in the U.S. to ban TikTok. Before it ever reached the point of blocking a “single viral video,” implementation was tied up in court—first with a temporary block and then with a later decision that prevented the ban from taking effect when it was scheduled.
Molloy had paused the case’s momentum by temporarily blocking the ban in 2023, and the state’s would-be TikTok prohibition remained in legal limbo after it drew pushback from users and the platform’s owner. The lawsuit was filed by several Montana TikTok users and ByteDance “days after the ban law was signed,” with the state defending it through Attorney General Austin Knudsen, according to reporting.
The challenge alleged that Montana’s ban violated the First Amendment and went beyond what state government could do by “wading into national security issues.” The combined case was defended by the Montana attorney general’s office, which later pointed to the law’s internal conditions for lifting the prohibition.
The dismissal turned on an ownership trigger inside the statute. Molloy said the clause voided the ban if ByteDance sold a majority share of TikTok to a non-Chinese company, and the ownership change took place in January. With that condition satisfied, the judge concluded the suit could not continue.
In a statement issued Feb. 20, Knudsen praised the transfer of ownership and linked it to the litigation’s end. Knudsen wrote that “President Trump, with his years of business and negotiation experience, worked diligently and succeeded in finding the right American company to purchase TikTok and make sure that Montanans and Americans will no longer be spied on by a foreign adversary,” adding that “Today’s dismissal ends years of litigation, brought on by TikTok, and will stop wasting taxpayers’ money.”
Reporting also said the Montana Department of Justice did not respond to a request from Montana Free Press for an interview for the story. The attorney general’s office had earlier signaled support for the TikTok ban when it was heard in the Legislature, including testimony from Department of Justice Crime Information Bureau Chief Anne Dormandy.
Dormandy testified at the bill’s initial hearing that “There are grave concerns with the popular app related to national security and China’s influence through TikTok,” according to the reporting. The bill passed the Legislature with “mostly Republican support,” and Gianforte had expressed concerns about how the law’s language could be challenged in court before signing it in spring 2023.
As the Montana ban languished in litigation, the issue of TikTok’s national-security risk was also taking on momentum in federal policy and congressional scrutiny. The reporting described a Biden administration directive in February requiring agency employees to delete TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, and a March congressional hearing in which lawmakers questioned TikTok CEO Zi Chew about data privacy.
While Montana’s ban was blocked, the federal government later enacted a law in 2024 barring the app unless ByteDance sold it within a following 270 days. The reporting said that federal effort survived legal challenges, and that on Jan. 18, 2025 TikTok briefly blocked American users a day before the federal law required the ownership change.
The reporting further described that after Donald Trump assured TikTok on Jan. 19 that he would issue an executive order to extend the sale window, the sale window was later extended on four separate occasions, allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. It said TikTok finalized a deal on Jan. 23, 2026, and that ByteDance still retains 19.9% ownership of TikTok.
Some legal experts, however, questioned whether shifting away from majority ownership by a Chinese entity meaningfully resolves the underlying data-access risks. Timothy Edgar, a cybersecurity expert affiliated with Brown University and Harvard Law School, filed an amicus brief in 2024 arguing against forcing ByteDance to divest on constitutional grounds, according to the reporting.
Edgar said the data-privacy concerns could have been handled earlier—during the period when pressure from the executive branch pushed TikTok to negotiate terms with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. He said the forced sale that mooted Montana’s ban could leave users with “a false sense of security,” adding that he worried there would be “less oversight of TikTok’s data” and “less pressure to uphold some of the requirements in that data safeguarding agreement that they had.”
“The focused on the wrong thing,” Edgar said of supporters of the forced sale, according to the reporting. “They focused on who owns the company instead of on what are the real risks? How would a country like China get ahold of data? And what are we going to do to protect our personal data against China?” He also said TikTok was “certainly one potential vulnerability,” while noting that other vulnerabilities existed beyond the app.
The Montana dismissal left standing the narrow legal conclusion that the state’s particular statutory ban was no longer enforceable under its own divestiture condition—but it did not end the broader constitutional and security debate about how U.S. regulators should address concerns over data access and influence.