Texas will ban TikTok use on state-owned devices or networks after all.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University challenged the government's proposed ban in a lawsuit filed in July, insisting it "is preventing or seriously impeding faculty from pursuing research that relates to TikTok."
However, on Monday (11.12.23), U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said the government's data concerns make it a "reasonable restriction".
He wrote: "Public university faculty - and all public employees - are free to use TikTok on their personal devices (as long as such devices are not used to access state networks)."
The decision comes after Montana filed a similar lawsuit against TikTok use but the ban was blocked due to it concerning all devices.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy stated: “Without TikTok", users "are deprived of communicating by their preferred means of speech."
The UK government announced it was banning TikTok amid security concerns.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak disallowed the video-sharing app from being downloaded onto government-owned devices like phones following fears about how their parent company, ByteDance - which is based in China - handles their data.
Oliver Downde, the Cabinet Office Minister told MPs the decision was being made after an extensive review found that there could "be a risk around how sensitive Government data is accessed and used by certain platforms."
The United States federal government and the European Commission did the same.
