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Unlawful ban

Cynthia Choi And Manjusha Kulkarni
Monday, Jan 20, 2025

Today, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s wrongheaded decision to ban TikTok in a unanimous decision. The ban on TikTok is set to take effect on Sunday January 19, 2025.

Ahead of this misguided ruling, 15 racial justice nonprofits submitted an emergency filing to the Supreme Court, explaining how the TikTok ban violates the rights of 170 million US users and echoes a disgraceful history of anti-Asian racism.

It is no secret that our government wrongfully uses “national security” as a weapon against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Stop AAPI Hate’s research highlights how the government routinely scapegoats our communities for economic downturns, public health crises, and national security threats – often without any evidence.

In the case of TikTok, the government claims that a ban is necessary to protect US national security against China. However, the government also filed an affidavit in open court, signed by a senior US national security official, stating there is “no information” that China had ever tried to use TikTok for nefarious purposes in the United States.

In other words, what Congress is telling the world is that being a person or company that simply has origins in Asia is enough to be labeled a national security threat – no evidence required.

That is racial profiling, plain and simple. And it is an affront to the Constitution.

It is disappointing, though unsurprising, that our government is targeting Asian American communities solely because of our race and national origins. Since our nation’s founding, our government has repeatedly trampled on the rights of Asians, Asian Americans, and other minority groups by relying on so-called “national security” concerns as a basis for outright racial discrimination.

Take, for example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, and government-sanctioned racial profiling and surveillance of innocent Muslim communities following the 9/11 attacks. More recently, we saw the China Initiative, a Department of Justice operation from 2018 to 2022 that unjustly targeted Chinese and Chinese American academics, ruined careers and livelihoods, and chilled scientific research.

Every time the government insisted that such laws or programs targeting Asian Americans were necessary, it reinforced the pernicious “perpetual foreigner” stereotype or the idea that all Asian people in America are inherently suspicious and disloyal to the United States based on our ancestry, skin color, or religious faith.

Those laws and programs were based on fearmongering and scapegoating. All three branches of government – the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court – eventually admitted that Japanese American incarceration violated the Constitution.

Excerpted: ‘The TikTok Ban Is Discriminatory and Unlawful. Here’s Why’. Courtesy: Commondreams.org