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School district mulling homework ban proposal from students

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STONY POINT, N.Y. (AP) — A school district just outside of New York City says it is considering a proposal from two fifth graders to get rid of homework.

Fifth-graders Christopher DeLeon and Niko Keelie at Farley Elementary School in Stony Point say they decided to petition for a homework ban due to stress from homework. WNBC-TV reports the district was already considering how to rethink homework for district students, saying they agreed with the students’ points.

Assistant Superintendent Kris Felicello said Wednesday that officials are trying to rethink homework to make it more beneficial for students.

The district is considering several options, one of which would allow parents to ask for homework for their children. School officials hope to have a new homework policy ready to go for the next school year.

Information from: WNBC-TV, http://www.nbcnewyork.com

Schools Don't Need to Ban Homework, They Just Need to Make It Better

Jan 7, 2019 12:00:00 AM

by Neil T. Heffernan

Neil T. Heffernan

Neil T. Heffernan is a professor of computer science and director of the Learning Sciences and Technologies Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the developer of  ASSISTments , a free web-hosted digital platform that provides teachers with specific insight into their students’ progress on math homework.

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What's the best state for you », new york school district weighs banning homework.

After two fifth-graders started a petition to ban homework, the district is considering options to lighten their load.

New York School May Ban Homework

JGI | Jamie Grill | Getty Images

The school district is considering several different options for homework, including allowing parents to ask for homework for their children.

At the behest of two fifth-grade students, a New York school district is considering doing away with homework assignments.

Christopher DeLeon and Niko Keelie at Farley Elementary School in Stony Point, New York started a petition to end homework at their school. The petition gained traction in their district, but, according to WNBC-TV , their idea is part of a larger trend across the country.

In arguing their case to officials with the school district, DeLeon and Keelie said many of their classmates agreed with the proposed homework ban – and the school district did as well, WNBC reported.

"I got stressed by homework a lot, so I just – it took me a minute of thinking: I want to get rid of homework," Keelie told the news station.

Assistant Superintendent Kris Felicello told WNBC the district had already been "rethinking" homework.

"It's really not about banning homework or no homework – it's about rethinking it, and how can we do it different to better the needs of our students," Felicello told the TV station.

School districts nationwide are examining their homework policies, turning to studies that say homework in elementary school doesn't help learning and that too much homework can actually be detrimental.

Does Your Teen Have Too Much Homework?

Raychelle Cassada Lohmann March 20, 2018

Indeed, students feel the pressure. DeLeon says too much homework stresses him and his fellows classmates and can cause them to do poorly on tests.

However, parents are concerned the lack of homework will leave their kids with nothing to do all afternoon or that they won't learn as much. Felicello says the opposite could actually be true, and they could learn new things in different ways or be physically active.

"I hope that kids would go home and they would read and they would discover things that they're interested in doing, and go on YouTube and figure out how to play the ukulele, or go and research what's going on with Space X, or talk to their friends or get outside and play," Felicello told WNBC.

The district is considering several options for homework, including allowing parents to ask for homework for their children. Officials hope to have the new policy enacted by the next school year.

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Tags: K-12 education , New York , elementary school

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BAN HOMEWORK FROM THE U.S.

It isn't fair that teachers can't prepare us for our education from the amount of time they give us at school. We as children are disconnected as our everyday lives relies from hours of homework. EVEN STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT HOMEWORK IS UNHEALTHY FOR US

SIGN THIS PETITION TO BAN HOMEWORK FROM THE U.S.!!!

• It’s counterintuitive to make children spend too many hours studying. If an adult has attention problems, that’s nothing compared to a kid. Children are still growing, their brains aren’t yet fully developed, and it’s crucial that they get a lot of exercise and free time. Something that they could do in thirty minutes if fully rested and energized will drag on for four hours if they’re restless and can’t focus because they left seven hours of school to directly jump into three hours of homework. ~ Mathprepa.com
• Getting sun and exercise is crucial for your health. If you’re cooped up in school during the day, then have to do your homework when you get home, you’ll develop poor health. A much better solution would be to do all the learning you need to do in one place, in a short amount of time. When you stop school, that’s the time for you to play and go outside and get exercise. ~ Mathprepa.com

• Ban Homework
• Nov 13 2020
• Harley Morton

Homework gives children more stress during school times that just living their life can be very stressful. so i believe that banning homework will reduce stress which ultimately improves life for school children so please sign now to make school less stressful in Australia, and facts say that the number one cause. of suicide is stress so banning homework will reduce stress and reduce suicide rates in young people, please sign immediately.

• Sign the petition

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You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it

The Ban Homework petition to school children was written by Harley Morton and is in the category Education at GoPetition.

Long Beach man started petition to ban unhosted short-term rentals in his neighborhood. It worked

First came the all-night parties and music blaring from a neighbor’s house in Long Beach that kept Andy Oliver up at night.

Then there were the “smoke outs,” when visitors enjoying refuge from hostile cannabis laws in their home states blazed marijuana throughout the day, sending clouds of hazy smoke into Oliver’s sanctuary, his house in the city's College Estates neighborhood.

The final straw was on Jan. 2, when a shooting victim climbed over his fence, bleeding and looking for shelter.

In each case, the source of Oliver's grief was tourists staying in an unhosted short-term rental next door. Such rentals are listed by homeowners who are not present during the guest's stay, as with Airbnb.

“All this happened over a year’s time, and it was beginning to be too much,” Oliver, 50, said. “This is a residential area, and something had to be done.”

Fast-forward four months, and Oliver has successfully petitioned Long Beach's Community Development Department to ban short-term rentals within College Estates. His win spawned nine similar petitions around the city.

“I don’t have the final count, but there are something like 755 homes, and we just got enough signatures,” Oliver said. “I heard it was close and I don’t have confirmation of the final vote, but I was informed [last week] that we succeeded.”

Oliver’s victory was the culmination of nearly a year of work, which included trying the city's complaint hotline, speaking with a council member and, ultimately, founding an online advocacy group, the Long Beach Safe Neighborhood Coalition.

For months, coalition members commiserated on the social media site Nextdoor over their frustrations with the short-term rentals, gathering momentum for a ban.

“The common theme that we kept running into was that this was a big deal for many residents and almost all of us got the runaround from the city of Long Beach,” Oliver said. “They didn’t seem to care.”

As short-term rentals have spread, the responses across Southern California have varied.

In Palm Springs, short-term rentals were capped in specific, high-demand neighborhoods, leading to a local drop in home prices.

In Orange County, Anaheim requires a minimum stay of three nights to avoid frequent disturbances, while Seal Beach has limited short-term rentals to 31 units in the city’s coastal zone south of Westminster Boulevard.

Last year, Lakewood banned them altogether .

Similarly, Long Beach originally banned unhosted short-term rentals in the early days of the pandemic. But that ordinance was loosened to allow for 800 non-primary-residence short-term rentals, meaning people could use their second properties within the city as an Airbnb.

Currently, there are 626 non-primary short-term rentals registered in the city, according to the Community Development Department.

Jean Young, a 67-year-old technical writer, is among those with a short-term rental.

“I’m a part-time writer, and the income from rentals just smooths out the rough edges and has been wonderful,” she said.

Young splits her time between her three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Long Beach's affluent Bixby Knolls neighborhood and one in the sprawling senior living community at Leisure World in Seal Beach, where she spends three or four months out of the year.

She began renting out a part of her Long Beach home 11 years ago to JetBlue and Southwest flight attendants in town between shifts, then turned it into a place of refuge for traveling nurses during COVID-19. Now Young hosts physical therapists and medical residents.

Sometimes, she rents out the entire place.

“My son has since moved on to college and my mother passed away, so there’s all this room in my house to share,” she said. “It would be sad to lose that ability.”

Young said she understands the backlash from community members. The Jan. 2 shooting next to Oliver's home on Kallin Avenue was “horrible” and an “abomination," she said, but a citywide ban would ultimately be "damaging."

Oliver said he initially tried other means.

He called the city’s hotline to complain about his neighbor’s rental, “but nothing was ever enforced.”

He reached out to a City Council member and the city attorney.

Eventually, he had to go grassroots.

“There were two previous petition drives that failed," he said, "so I wasn’t sure if we would have success.”

But whenever he was discouraged, he would think back to his encounters with rowdy neighbors.

In December, he said he spoke with a bunch of 20-somethings from Texas staying at his neighbor's house, because the “insane amount of marijuana they were smoking” was floating into his home.

“They said recreational marijuana wasn’t allowed in Texas and they were going to take advantage of their time here,” he said.

Just a few weeks later, on Jan. 2, a man standing in front of a rental in the 800 block of Kallin Avenue was shot in the lower body by an unknown gunman, according to Long Beach police.

The home had been listed on Peerspace, an online marketplace for hourly rentals, Oliver said. The shooting is still under investigation.

The victim tried to climb Oliver’s fence and smeared blood on the gate as he crossed into the yard.

“My house was closed for hours due to an investigation,” he said.

As momentum for Oliver's petition grew, help came from unexpected places.

Better Neighbors LA , a self-described coalition of hosts, tenants, housing activists, hotel workers and community members, footed Oliver's $1,050 petition ban fee with the city.

“BNLA is happy to support neighbors like Andy in Long Beach as well as people and groups across Los Angeles County who want reasonable regulations on an out-of-control industry that affects their neighborhoods," the group said in a statement.

Oliver said the group is also funding efforts to ban unhosted short-term rentals in nine other Long Beach communities, including El Dorado Park, Naples and South of Conant, where resident Stephen Carr is leading an effort.

Carr, a freelance photographer, said the ban was necessary after his neighbor's home listed on Airbnb “turned into a hotel.”

He said one weekend last summer, guests in town for an electronic dance music festival stayed up every night.

“The music is blaring. There’s screaming and drunkenness spilling out into the front and back lawns till 3 a.m.,” he said. “One of the guests actually apologized the next day, but then they partied again till 4 a.m.”

Carr said he called the police, but they would only issue warnings. He also tried the city’s complaint hotline but never received a call back.

Eventually, he found Oliver on Nextdoor and linked up with Better Neighbors LA, which he said funded his $1,050 petition fee.

“There’s no regulation, no help coming from anywhere,” Carr said.

The sites that host in Long Beach such as Airbnb, Peerspace and Vrbo say they have outlets for residents to voice their concerns and point out problems.

Airbnb cited a city report in April that said the majority of its operators were “meeting compliance standards” and that there was “proactive and reactive” enforcement against violations.

The hosting site has a Community Disturbance Policy that bans parties and events that are disruptive, open-invite and draw excessive noise, visitors, trash, littering and smoking, among other issues.

Neighbors witnessing issues or violations are encouraged to reach out to Airbnb's support staff, a company spokesperson said.

Peerspace, meanwhile, said its sites rent out venues on an hourly basis including homes, photo studios, storefronts and banquet halls. Unlike Airbnb and Vrbo, the company does not permit overnight bookings.

The company said it takes neighbor concerns seriously and asks anyone experiencing complications to reach out to its Trust and Safety team. It also said it had no listing for the home on Kallin Avenue on Jan. 2, when the shooting victim climbed into Oliver's backyard.

Vrbo recommends that neighbors with complaints first address any issues with the host. They then suggest filling out a Stay Neighbor complaint form if a resolution can't be found.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .

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TikTok challenges U.S. ban in court, calling it unconstitutional

Bobby Allyn

TikTok's suit is in response to a law passed by Congress giving ByteDance up to a year to divest from TikTok and find a new buyer, or face a nationwide ban. Kiichiro Sato/AP hide caption

TikTok's suit is in response to a law passed by Congress giving ByteDance up to a year to divest from TikTok and find a new buyer, or face a nationwide ban.

TikTok and its parent company on Tuesday filed a legal challenge against the United States over a law that President Biden signed last month outlawing the app nationwide unless it finds a buyer within a year.

In the petition filed in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the company said the legislation exceeds the bounds of the constitution and suppresses the speech of millions of Americans.

"Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act's sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok's ownership," according to the filing.

The law, passed through Congress at lightning speed, which caught many inside TikTok off guard, is intended to force TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese company in nine months, with the possibility of a three month extension if a possible sale is in play.

Yet lawyers for TikTok say the law offers the company a false choice, since fully divesting from its parent company, ByteDance, is "simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally," the challenge states. "And certainly not on the 270-day timeline required by the Act."

Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in technology regulations, said if TikTok loses this legal fight, it will likely shut down in the U.S.

"The problem for TikTok is that they have a parent company that has these obligation in China, but they're trying to live by free speech rules by the United States," Chander said in an interview. "The question is whether American courts will believe that that's even possible."

TikTok says law based on "speculative and analytically flawed concerns"

Lawmakers in Washington have long been suspicious of TikTok, fearing its Chinese owner could use the popular app to spy on Americans or spread dangerous disinformation.

But in the company's legal petition, lawyers for TikTok say invoking "national security" does not give the government a free pass to violate the First Amendment, especially, TikTok, argues, when no public evidence has been presented of the Chinese government using the app as a weapon against Americans.

Possible TikTok ban could be 'an extinction-level event' for the creator economy

According to the filing, the law is based on "speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation — concerns that, even if grounded in fact, could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means."

New DOJ Filing: TikTok's Owner Is 'A Mouthpiece' Of Chinese Communist Party

Constitutional scholars say there are few ways for the government to restrict speech in a way that would survive a legal challenge. One of those ways is if the government can demonstrate a national security risk. Also key, legal experts say, is the government showing the speech suppression was the least restrictive option on the table.

TikTok said Congress ignored less restrictive ways of addressing the government's national security concerns.

"If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down," the filing states. "And for TikTok, any such divestiture would disconnect Americans from the rest of the global community."

Since more than 90% of TikTok's users are outside of America, Georgetown's Chander said selling the U.S.-based app to a different owner would cannibalize its own business.

"You can't really create a TikTok U.S., while having a different company manage TikTok Canada," Chander said in an interview. "What you're doing essentially is creating a rival between two TikToks," he said. " It may be better to take your marbles out of the United States and hope to make money outside of the U.S., rather than sell it at a fire-sale price."

TikTok critics call app a 'spy balloon on your phone'

The filing sets off what could be the most important battle for TikTok. It has been fending off legal challenges to its existence since former President Trump first sought to ban the app through an executive order in the summer of 2020. That effort was blocked by federal courts.

Since then, Democrats and Republicans have shown a rare moment of unity around calls to pressure TikTok to sever its ties with ByteDance, the Beijing-based tech giant that owns the video-streaming app.

Trump's Ban On TikTok Suffers Another Legal Setback

Congress has never before passed legislation that could outright ban a wildly popular social media app, a gesture the U.S. government has criticized authoritarian nations for doing.

In the case of TikTok, however, lawmakers have called the app a "spy balloon on your phone," emphasizing how the Chinese government could gain access to the personal data of U.S. citizens.

Worries also persist in Washington that Beijing could influence the views of Americans by dictating what videos are boosted on the platform. That concern has only become heightened seven months before a presidential election.

Yet the fears so far indeed remain hypothetical.

There is no publicly available example of the Chinese government attempting to use TikTok as an espionage or data collection tool. And no proof that the Chinese government has ever had a hand over what TikTok's 170 million American users see every day on the app.

TikTok says it offers U.S. a plan that would shut app down if it violated agreement

TikTok, for its part, says it has invested $2 billion on a plan, dubbed Project Texas, to separate its U.S. operation from its Chinese parent company. It deleted all of Americans' data from foreign servers and relocated all of the data to servers on U.S. soil overseen by the Austin-based tech company Oracle.

While the plan was intended to build trust with U.S. lawmakers and users, reports surfaced showing that data was still moving between staff in California and Beijing.

In the filing on Tuesday, TikTok said it submitted an agreement to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has been probing the app for five years, that would allow the U.S. to suspend TikTok if it violated terms set forth in a national security plan.

But, lawyers for TikTok say, the deal was swept aside, "in favor of the politically expedient and punitive approach," the petition states.

Mnuchin claims he will place a bid to buy TikTok, even though app is not for sale

Despite the new law giving TikTok the ultimatum of selling or being shut down, there are many questions around how the app could even be bought by another company or group of investors.

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told NPR on Monday, he is planning to assemble a group of investors to try to purchase TikTok without the app's algorithm.

Mnuchin, who declined to answer additional questions, said in between sessions at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles that the proposal to buy the app is still in the works, but he would not say when it would be formally submitted.

One major obstacle in any possible sale of TikTok is a glaring problem: The app is not for sale.

TikTok Ban Averted: Trump Gives Oracle-Walmart Deal His 'Blessing'

Despite the new law in the U.S., ByteDance says it does not intend to let go of the service. Furthermore, winning the support of China would be necessary, and officials in Beijing are adamantly against any forced sale.

In 2020, amid the Trump administration's clamp down on the app, China added "content-recommendation algorithms" to its export-control list, effectively adding new regulations over how TikTok's all-powerful algorithm could ever be sold.

ByteDance, not TikTok, developed and controls the algorithm that determines what millions see on the app every day. The technology has become the envy of Silicon Valley, and no U.S. tech company has been able dislodge TikTok's firm hold on the short-form video market. Experts say key to its success is its highly engaging and hyper-personalized video-ranking algorithm.

The algorithm, which involves millions of lines of software code developed by thousands of engineers over many years, cannot be easily transferred to the U.S., even if China did allow it, TikTok's challenge states.

Lawyers for TikTok argue that "any severance [of the algorithm] would leave TikTok without access to the recommendation engine that has created a unique style and community that cannot be replicated on any other platform today."

TikTok sues U.S. government, saying potential ban violates First Amendment

TikTok is suing the U.S. government to stop enforcement of a bill passed last month that seeks to force the app’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., argues that the bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates constitutional protections of free speech.

The suit calls the law an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment.

“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” TikTok wrote in the lawsuit, “and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”

The company argues that invoking national security concerns is not a sufficient reason for restricting free speech, and that the burden is on the federal government to prove that this restriction is warranted. It has not met that burden, the lawsuit stated.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A White House spokesperson directed a request for comment to the Justice Department.

John Moolenaar, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said: “Congress and the Executive Branch have concluded, based on both publicly available and classified information, that TikTok poses a grave risk to national security and the American people. It is telling that TikTok would rather spend its time, money, and effort fighting in court than solving the problem by breaking up with the CCP. I’m confident that our legislation will be upheld.”

The lawsuit, which had been expected since President Joe Biden signed the bill on April 24, is expected to add to an already lengthy timeline for a potential ban or sale of the app. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, already had more than a year to make a move. Now, legal proceedings will pause that timeline, meaning it could be years before a ban goes into effect .

Tuesday’s lawsuit is the latest development in what has become a multiyear effort by the U.S. government to effectively ban TikTok. Efforts to rein in the popular video-sharing app have persisted since 2020 under both the Trump and Biden administrations. The federal government and dozens of states have already banned the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.

Republican and Democratic politicians and some in the national security community say they’re concerned about TikTok’s data collection and security practices, as well as how the app’s video recommendation algorithm works. Outside experts have looked at these claims with some skepticism, noting the lack of data security laws in the U.S. makes TikTok no different from other apps and that claims about efforts to manipulate public opinion are based on little hard evidence .

Still, TikTok has made some efforts to assure the public and U.S. officials that it takes data security seriously. In 2022, the company started “Project Texas,” a move meant to provide data security and transparency around the information the app collects about U.S. users. That has done little to quell government concern over the app and the Chinese government’s oversight of it.

The lawsuit states that Congress has not offered any evidence suggesting that TikTok poses the types of data security risks or foreign propaganda spread that “could conceivably justify” the law, and has failed to prove that the app poses any specific harm in these areas.

“The statements of congressional committees and individual Members of Congress during the hasty, closed-door legislative process preceding the Act’s enactment confirm that there is at most speculation, not ‘evidence,’ as the First Amendment requires,” the lawsuit states.

TikTok further claims the law violates the right to due process under the Fifth Amendment and is an unconstitutional bill of attainder — or a legislative act declaring a party guilty of a crime, and imposing a punishment for it, without trial.

“Congress has never before crafted a two-tiered speech regime with one set of rules for one named platform, and another set of rules for everyone else,” it stated in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also states that the law is effectively a ban on TikTok, and that ByteDance’s option to divest is “illusory” because it is not commercially, technologically or legally possible, especially within the 270 days outlined by the law.

“According to its sponsors,” the lawsuit stated, “the Act is not a ban because it offers ByteDance a choice: divest TikTok’s U.S. business or be shut down. But in reality, there is no choice.”

If the law remains in place, the lawsuit stated, it would enable the federal government to invoke national security and force the publishers of other platforms, including news sites, to sell or be shut down.

Gautam Hans, an associate clinical professor of law at Cornell University and associate director of its First Amendment Clinic, said in an email statement that overcoming widespread congressional support for the law may prove difficult for TikTok.

“TikTok has prevailed in its previous First Amendment challenges, but the bipartisan nature of this federal law may make judges more likely to defer to a Congressional determination that the company poses a national security risk,” Hans said. “Without public discussion of what exactly the risks are, however, it’s difficult to determine why the courts should validate such an unprecedented law.”

This challenge from TikTok went straight to the D.C. Court of Appeals because of what’s called Exclusive Jurisdiction. It was effectively written in to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that the only place a challenge to the law could be heard is in this court. The D.C. Court of Appeals is often referred to as the second-highest court in the nation because many cases it decides affect people across the country, not just in its immediate vicinity.

Angela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.

Savannah Sellers is an anchor and correspondent for NBC News.

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TikTok creators file suit to block US divestment or ban law

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Closed petition Ban homework except for GCSE coursework

We want schools to be banned from setting homework, except for GCSE coursework, which should be kept to a minimum.

Because pre-teens and teenagers should be free to do more creative things with their spare time, or socialise with peers, or rest. Many students already have a stressful life and homework can add to this. Too much stress can effect work in school. We also believe that homework is not an effective way for students to learn, and often it is just used to recap what they already understand.

This petition is closed All petitions run for 6 months

375 signatures

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• Date closed 3 November 2023

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.

TikTok is footing the bill for a new lawsuit filed by creators challenging a ban

Eight TikTok content creators sued the U.S. government on Tuesday, issuing another challenge to the new federal law that would ban the popular social media platform nationwide if its China-based parent company doesn’t sell its stakes within a year.

Attorneys for the creators argue in the lawsuit that the law violates users’ First Amendment rights to free speech, echoing arguments made by TikTok in a separate lawsuit filed by the company last week. The legal challenge could end up  before the Supreme Court .

The complaint filed Tuesday comes from a diverse set of content creators, including a Texas-based rancher who has previously appeared in a TikTok commercial, a creator in Arizona who uses TikTok to show his daily life and spread awareness about LGBTQ issues, as well as a business owner who sells skincare products on TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of the platform.

The lawsuit says the creators “rely on TikTok to express themselves, learn, advocate for causes, share opinions, create communities, and even make a living.”

“They have found their voices, amassed significant audiences, made new friends, and encountered new and different ways of thinking — all because of TikTok’s novel way of hosting, curating, and disseminating speech,” it added, arguing the new law would deprive them and the rest of the country “of this distinctive means of expression and communication.”

A spokesperson for TikTok said the company was covering the legal costs for the lawsuit, which was filed in a Washington appeals court. It is being led by the same law firm that represented creators who challenged Montana’s statewide ban on the platform last year. In November, a judge  blocked that law  from going into effect.

The Department of Justice said that the legislation that could ban TikTok “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner that is consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations. We look forward to defending the legislation in court.”

The federal law comes at a time of intense strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China on a host of issues and as the two butt heads over sensitive geopolitical topics like China’s support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. lawmakers and administration officials have aired concerns about how well TikTok can protect users’ data from Chinese authorities and have argued its algorithm could be used to spread pro-China propaganda, which TikTok disputes.

Under the law, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance would be required to sell the platform to an approved buyer within nine months. If a sale is in progress, the company will get a three-month extension to complete the deal.

However, TikTok and ByteDance said in  their lawsuit last week  that they would still have no choice but to shut down by Jan. 19 because continuing to operate in the U.S. wouldn’t be commercially, technologically or legally possible.

They assert it would be impossible for ByteDance to divest its U.S. TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the United States. A U.S.-only TikTok would operate as an island detached from the rest of the world, the lawsuit argues. It also says the Chinese government — which would need to approve such a sale — has “made clear” it would not permit a sale of the recommendation algorithm that populates users’ feeds and has been the “key to the success of TikTok in the United States.”

In an interview, Brian Firebaugh, the Hubbard, Texas-based rancher who is part of the creator lawsuit, said he started his TikTok account in 2020 to help establish his brand and market the cattle-related products that he sells online. That decision allowed him to quit his full-time job and live off the income he was making from TikTok, where he currently has more than 430,000 followers.

Firebaugh, 44, said TikTok has also helped him build an online community with other ranchers and gave him the opportunity to participate in a Netflix reality show where his winnings allowed him and his wife to afford the adoption process for their son. Losing TikTok, he said, would disrupt everything.

“One hundred percent of our customers come from TikTok,” Firebaugh said. “For that to go away, you’re now stealing money out of my family’s mouths.”

Chloe Joy Sexton, a 29-year-old content creator who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and runs a cookie business called Chloe’s Giant Cookies, said she started experimenting with TikTok four years ago after losing her prior job. Sexton said she had been posting content on other social media platforms, but only TikTok created a viral trajectory for her baking. Today, she has more than 2 million followers on the app, where she has also shared more intimate details about her life, such as losing her mother to brain cancer and subsequently adopting her little sister.

“There has been no evidence whatsoever that my information is in danger or anybody else’s,” said Sexton, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Nobody has provided that — not the government, not anybody else. And to base this purchase, this tug of war that changes my life off of a hypothetical is so hurtful to me personally, because my government at that point is not protecting me.”

The creators are asking the court to issue a declaration saying the law is unconstitutional and an order that would prevent Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing it.

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TikTok Sues U.S. Government Over Law Forcing Sale or Ban

The social media company and its Chinese parent, ByteDance, sued to challenge the new law, saying it violated users’ First Amendment rights.

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By Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe

TikTok sued the federal government on Tuesday over a new law that would force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, stoking a battle over national security and free speech that is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

TikTok said the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was “simply not possible,” especially within the law’s 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing’s refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.

“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide,” the company said in the 67-page petition, which initiated the lawsuit. “There is no question: The act will force a shutdown of TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025.”

TikTok is battling for its survival in the United States, with the fight set to play out primarily in courts over the next few months. The battle pits Congress’s national security concerns about the social media app’s ties to China against TikTok’s argument that a sale or ban would violate the First Amendment free-speech rights of its users and hurt small businesses that owe their livelihood to the platform. The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

The issue is particularly tricky in an election year, when President Biden and lawmakers are facing potential blowback from users of the popular app. The app, which says it has 170 million monthly users in the United States, is used for everything from sharing viral dances to political commentary. It’s become knitted into people’s lives, particularly for those who make a living on the platform as content creators.

Under the new law , which President Biden signed on April 24, TikTok has nine months, or a year if the president gives it an extension, to find a non-Chinese buyer. If it doesn’t, the law requires U.S. app stores and web hosting services to stop working with it — essentially banning it.

At the heart of the case will be lawmakers’ intent to defend the United States from what they and some experts say is a national security threat; they assert that the Chinese government could lean on ByteDance to turn over sensitive TikTok user data or use the app to spread propaganda. But the mandate to sell or block the app could result in changes to TikTok’s content policies and shape what users are able to freely share on the platform, potentially violating their free speech rights, according to legal experts.

“These are hugely consequential questions being dealt with in an unprecedented manner,” said Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School who has done research on the First Amendment and the internet. “TikTok basically throws the First Amendment sink at this challenge.”

TikTok filed its suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing that selling its U.S. operations was not “commercially, technologically, or legally feasible.” A part of that argument hinges on how TikTok and its competitors are global in nature and content is accessible across country borders, with international videos as part of its appeal.

It is also impossible to move the app’s underlying coding to a new owner, TikTok argued, adding that it would take years for a new set of engineers to familiarize themselves with that code to develop and maintain the platform. In addition, the engineers would need access to ByteDance software to keep TikTok functioning, which the new law prohibits, the company argued.

TikTok’s success also hinges on its recommendation algorithm, which helps surface tailored content to users, something the Chinese government has said it would not sell, the suit notes.

TikTok pointed to the billions of dollars it has already spent to address potential security risks in the past four years, an effort known as Project Texas, as well as a draft 90-page national security agreement that made “extraordinary” commitments to the U.S. government. TikTok has separated its U.S. user data from the rest of the company’s operations and provided third-party oversight of its content recommendations.

The company said in its suit that it agreed to give the government a “shutdown option” that would allow it to suspend TikTok in the United States if the company violated parts of its agreement.

Anupam Chander, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard who has publicly opposed the law, said that he was among experts TikTok contacted on Monday for an advance briefing on the filing. He said Project Texas is likely to play a key role, and whether TikTok can persuade the judge that it was a reasonably available alternative that addressed the government’s concerns.

“The real question that remains that I haven’t seen an answer to is, what more would the government have wanted?” Mr. Chander said. “We’ve never heard why Project Texas was insufficient, publicly.”

Read TikTok’s legal challenge

National security concerns about TikTok are “speculative” and fall short of what’s required to justify violating First Amendment rights, the company argued in its suit, adding that President Biden and other members of Congress’s use of the platform undermines claims that it’s a threat.

TikTok asked the court to issue a declaratory judgment saying that the law violated the Constitution and to issue an order that would stop Attorney General Merrick B. Garland from enforcing it. The next step is for the government to respond.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on potential litigation.

The government is likely to defend the law by saying it is calling for a sale, not a ban. The government will probably also need to make a strong case that its national security concerns justify the limitation on speech if TikTok is banned.

The Justice Department, which was involved in drafting the law, weighed in on language that would help the Biden administration best defend it in court.

“They’re going to have to support their concerns with evidence in a way that they haven’t really done, at least in the court of public opinion, and they’re going to have to show that their concerns can’t be addressed in narrower ways,” Ramya Krishnan, a senior lawyer at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in an interview before the petition was filed.

The institute expects to support a challenge to the law, she said. The American Civil Liberties Union has also said it opposed the law and may help with litigation.

TikTok’s suit was filed a day after its chief executive , Shou Chew, appeared with his wife at the Met Gala, where he was an honorary chair.

Fears of a potential security threat from TikTok have escalated in the last year and a half, prompting bans of the app on federal devices and those issued by some city and state governments. Still, the app has continued to grow in popularity, shaping culture and becoming a source of news for younger Americans as well as a place where an expanding cohort of content creators make their living.

TikTok has had success in challenging similar state and federal actions attempting to restrict its operations, though this law differs in its broad support from Congress and the Biden administration.

Last year, Montana passed a law that would have barred TikTok from operating in the state as of Jan. 1, saying the company presented a security threat to its citizens. A group of TikTok users filed a lawsuit funded by the app, saying the law violated their First Amendment rights and outstripped the state’s legal authority. TikTok also filed a separate lawsuit within a week, arguing that the legislation violated the First Amendment.

In November, a federal judge blocked the Montana ban , saying it most likely violated the First Amendment and a clause that gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.

Former President Donald J. Trump also tried to ban or force the sale of TikTok in 2020 with an executive order citing similar security concerns. Federal courts blocked the Commerce Department from carrying out his plan in part on First Amendment grounds, with one judge adding it would shut down a “platform for expressive activity.” Another judge said the government most likely overstepped its legal authority and “acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing to consider obvious alternatives.”

Sapna Maheshwari reports on TikTok, technology and emerging media companies. She has been a business reporter for more than a decade. Contact her at [email protected] . More about Sapna Maheshwari

David McCabe covers tech policy. He joined The Times from Axios in 2019. More about David McCabe

Western Australia's $1.35 billion sheep industry already shrinking due to live export ban, stakeholders say

ABC Rural Western Australia's $1.35 billion sheep industry already shrinking due to live export ban, stakeholders say

West Australian agriculture figures say the federal government's ban on live sheep exports will hurt farmers and regional communities already dealing with challenging conditions .

With exports set to cease in 2028, supporters of the ban have argued the industry has plenty of time to prepare for the change, and Agriculture Minister Murray Watt says the government's $107 million transition package will provide adequate assistance.

Advocates have have hailed the ban's timeline, announced on Saturday, as a win for animal welfare, and a fulfilment of the government's election commitment to end the trade.

But farmers from sheep-related industries  argue a decision made with animal welfare in mind will ultimately lead to worse outcomes for the animals  and the people directly impacted.

WA Shearing Industry Association president Darren Spencer says his industry will be crippled without live export of sheep, accusing federal Labor of abandoning its working class roots in the sector.

The 1891 shearers' strike is considered a key factor in the creation of the Australian Labor Party .

Mr Spencer says the ban will see WA's already-shrinking sheep flock reduce even further, leaving many farmers worried for their future.

Based at Lake Grace, 320 kilometres south of Perth in the eastern Wheatbelt, the veteran shearer said the ban would have a ripple effect.

"Our staff contribute to so many local towns. People set themselves up and buy a house. It's going to be hard for them because they may have to move on," Mr Spencer said. 

"Shearers struggling to make an income and a make a profit, they'll be thinking, 'It's probably just time I walk away'."

Coming off the back of a global pandemic where shearer availability was an issue, Mr Spencer added that time and money had been spent on training up industry-ready men and women to propel it forward.

"We've tried to nurture those people and better them in the industry. We need to keep those people employed," he said.

Money already lost

The WA government's Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development valued the state's sheep industry at $1.35 billion in 2021-2022. 

Steven Bolt, a sheep producer and director of advocacy group The Livestock Collective, said challenging conditions already had farmers departing the industry and reducing their flocks.

Based on internal industry forecasting data, he said the state was on track to lose $500 million within the next two years due to declining sheep and wool production.

Mr Bolt said farmers reducing stock numbers had cited two-to-three month waits for abattoir space, with sheep that would normally be processed competing for space with animals that had previously been on-farm breeding flocks.

He said people were leaving the sheep industry, or significantly downsizing, because they had lost confidence in its future — something the export ban would only further reduce.

"We are seeing activists and inner-city votes take precedence over the science and the truth about a highly regulated industry, and the importance of that industry to the state," Mr Bolt said. 

He said the average sheep price in WA had fallen $90 per head over the past two years, while the local mutton prices were currently a third of those in New South Wales. 

"The wool industry will lose 25 per cent of its wool production by the middle of next year," Mr Bolt said. 

He said other farmers chose not to mate their sheep last spring, reducing the amount of lambs on farms across the state. 

Farmers destroying livestock

Tim Meecham operates a crossbred sheep enterprise at Quobba Station, north of Carnarvon. 

With depressed livestock prices, high freight costs and years of dry seasonal conditions, he destroyed about 200 head of sheep this year and feared he would have to do it again soon.

"They weren't going to pay for freight, so I had to go and shoot them. It's a shit of a job," he said.

"I'm happy to go and pick Murray Watt up from the Carnarvon airstrip and take him out there and hand him a rifle. He can shoot them himself and see how it feels." 

"[Live export] is one part of the industry [and] we need all parts there to keep the sheep industry in WA rolling.

"We are not New South Wales or Queensland, but they seem to have forgotten we are part of Australia."

Polling of 800 WA residents commissioned by the RSCPA last year (450 in metropolitan Perth, 350 in Regional WA) found 71 per cent of respondents supported the live export ban.

Minister Murray Watt has repeatedly referenced that polling since announcing Labor would pursue its election mandate to implement the ban, citing ongoing public support as a reason for the government's action.

'Screwing us over'

WA Farmers vice president and Kojonup farmer Steve McGuire said he was ready to "fight like hell" between now and May 1, 2028.

"Now when you go to a polling booth, you're going to see a farmer there saying, 'Put this mob last'," he said.

"We need time, and we need money. They are basically just screwing us over."

The fifth-generation farmer said producers around the state would be having tough conversations about what the future could look like for them.

"My wife and I even had that discussion: Do we keep farming because we don't know what to do next?

"No matter what we say or do, the government might just chop it off.

"Common sense and good argument obviously has nothing to do with it."

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Watch CBS News

TikTok sues Biden administration to block new law that could lead to U.S. ban

By Melissa Quinn

Edited By Caroline Linton , Alex Sundby

Updated on: May 7, 2024 / 5:38 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — TikTok, the widely popular social media app, and its parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday over a new law that requires the platform to cut ties with its China-based owner within a year or be effectively banned from the United States.

The petition filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the measure signed into law by President Biden last month is unconstitutional in part because it violates the First Amendment rights of its users in the U.S. by effectively shutting down their access to the popular forum. Filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the petition calls for the court to block Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing the measure.

The suit names TikTok and Beijing-based ByteDance as plaintiffs and was filed against Garland.

The foreign aid package passed by Congress last month included a provision that required ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok within a year. If the company fails to meet that one-year deadline, TikTok would lose access to app stores and web-hosting providers, effectively cutting it off to the roughly 170 million users in the U.S. 

But TikTok said in its filing that while lawmakers portrayed the measure as a choice between divesture or a ban, "there is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere."

The company said that the divestiture required by the law within a 270-day timeline, subject to a 90-day extension by the president, is "simply not possible," and pointed to the Chinese government's opposition to selling the technology that has made TikTok so wildly popular in the U.S. — its recommendation engine.

"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide," TikTok wrote in its filing.

TikTok came under scrutiny by Congress amid concerns about the app's ties to China . U.S. officials have warned that the video-sharing platform is a threat to national security, in part because they say the Chinese government can use it to spy on Americans or weaponize the app to manipulate content and influence the public.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Intelligence Committee in March that the Chinese government could use TikTok's software to gain access to Americans' phones. Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and across partisan lines have also expressed alarm about the app after participating in classified briefings.

Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said in a statement that Congress and the executive branch concluded that TikTok "poses a grave risk to national security and the American people." 

"It is telling that TikTok would rather spend its time, money, and effort fighting in court than solving the problem by breaking up with the CCP," he said.

TikTok's legal effort was not unexpected, as the company had pledged to challenge the law's constitutionality in court. The company has pointed to an initiative called "Project Texas," launched in 2022, to demonstrate its efforts to safeguard U.S. user data and the integrity of its platform from foreign government influence. TikTok also said it was involved in a draft agreement through negotiations with an obscure federal agency, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States , that included a "shut-down option" allowing the app to be suspended in the U.S. if it failed to meet certain obligations.

The platform accused Congress in its petition of overlooking its investments "in favor of the politically expedient and punitive approach of targeting for disfavor one publisher and speaker (TikTok Inc.), one speech forum (TikTok), and that forum's ultimate owner (ByteDance Ltd.)"

Concerns about TikTok from policymakers have escalated in recent years, and more than 30 states and the federal government have banned the app on state-issued devices. Former President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2020 that would've prohibited transactions with ByteDance, citing the data collection that "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information." But his attempts to ban the app were blocked by federal judges.

Montana became the first state to prohibit the app last year, but a federal judge blocked the measure in part because of First Amendment concerns.

But even amid those fears, several political figures have their own accounts, including Mr. Biden's presidential campaign and members of Congress. TikTok pointed to the use of the app by supporters of the ban in its petition and said it "undermines the claim that the platform poses an actual threat to Americans."

Caitlin Yilek and Kaia Hubbard contributed to this report.

• Biden Administration
• Social Media
• Chinese Communist Party
• United States Department of Justice
• White House

Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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