TikTok, the enormously popular social media app, has enlisted the services of Covington & Burling and Mayer Brown in an attempt to combat a law that requires its Chinese parent company to disinvest from it. To keep its US operations afloat, this sell-off is an operational imperative for the ByteDance-owned social media giant.
Washington-based law firm Covington has a track record of handling TikTok’s legal issues linked to federal and state authorities which includes former attorney general Eric Holder amongst its ranks. The firm had, as of November, successfully assisted TikTok in quashing a law in Montana that proposed a ban on the app within the state’s borders. Furthermore, Mayer Brown, alongside Covington, now argues that the new law violates constitutional standards.
The emergent law comes after President Joe Biden signed a bill into action on April 24, marking the commencement of a 270-day countdown for the divestiture process, failing which would lead to US prohibition of the video-sharing platform. The new ruling was passed after US lawmakers voiced their concerns over the app pushing harmful content directed at children and the potential risks of downloading malicious code from a foreign adversary.
Covington became involved with TikTok in 2020 when the Trump administration sought to ban the app nationally due to alleged national security concerns. The firm achieved an injunction against this executive order, which was subsequently rescinded by President Biden. In addition, last year Covington helped TikTok procure a dismissal of Indiana’s lawsuit that claimed the app mislead users about data security and the nature of the content it served to children.
Established in 1919, Covington boasts an array of former government lawyers and a client portfolio consisting of blue-chip titans such as Microsoft and the NFL. Key personnel from the firm steering its representation of TikTok include global litigation chair John Hall in addition to Alex Berengaut and Megan Crowley, the latter being a former Department of Justice trial lawyer.
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