The Trump administration is still refusing to enforce a federal ban on TikTok, and Silicon Valley software engineer Tony Tan is fed up. Last month, Tan sued the US Department of Justice for allegedly failing to turn over records about why it has not taken action against Google and Apple, which Tan believes are violating the law by continuing to host TikTok on their respective app stores.
Tan is now stepping up his fight against what he sees as a worrying and potentially costly trend away from respecting the American legal system. On Tuesday, he filed a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware state court against Google’s parent organization Alphabet. Tan alleges the company wrongfully denied a request he made for internal documents about Google’s decision to risk billions of dollars in fines by not complying with the TikTok ban.
“The biggest thing that motivates me here is I’ve been frustrated by the volume of recent attacks on our legal system,” says Tan, who is in his late twenties and owns a small number of Alphabet shares directly and through investment funds. “If Google is outright breaking the law, and they don’t have to acknowledge it, they very much are above the law, and that doesn’t seem right to me.”
Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in a letter to Tan’s attorneys seen by WIRED, a lawyer representing Google questioned whether the tech giant was really violating the TikTok ban, calling the idea an “unsupported legal conclusion.” Tan’s records request “appears simply to be wondering if Alphabet is complying with applicable laws,” Doru Gavril, a partner at the firm Freshfields, wrote in March. “Curiosity alone is not a basis for a books and records inspection demand.”
TikTok’s future in the United States has been under threat for years. President Donald Trump tried banning the app during his first term in 2020, arguing it posed a risk to national security because it was run by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company. After years of congressional debate and a legal battle that made it up to the Supreme Court, a law banning companies such as Apple and Google from helping to distribute TikTok and other Chinese apps in the US went into effect this past January.
TikTok then disappeared from app stores for about half a day, until Trump issued an executive order pausing enforcement of the law and giving ByteDance time to reach a deal to reduce its ownership stake in TikTok’s US operation. In the months since, Trump has used the popular video platform as a bargaining chip in high-stakes trade negotiations with China.
Legal experts and some lawmakers have questioned the legality of Trump’s order, which expires June 19. But there haven’t been any known legal challenges to it, and the president has indicated that he will extend the pause again as discussions with Beijing continue.