PA senators approve bill banning TikTok from state devices

Lawmakers in the Pennsylvania Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to pass legislation that would ban TikTok from state-owned devices, a proposal that follows a move by Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who first implemented a department-wide ban on TikTok in December 2022. 

The bill, Senate Bill 376, would prohibit state employees from downloading or installing TikTok on state-owned devices – a term that includes any device capable of downloading or installing the app. The legislation would also ban the installation of “any successor application or service” developed by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance Limited. 

The legislation would also prohibit the app from being accessed on state wireless networks.

TikTok – the short-form social media platform boasting more than 170 million users in the U.S. and over 1 billion active users worldwide – has become a political flashpoint across the country as lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned about the app’s potential security ramifications.

Critics fear that ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, could become subject to a 2017 Chinese intelligence law that says that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the (National Intelligence) Law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work from becoming known to the public.” The possibility that China could access the data and devices of American users has prompted cybersecurity and national security experts – as well as Congress – to sound the alarm on TikTok’s security. 

Last December, then-President Joe Biden signed legislation into law that bans “foreign adversary-controlled applications” in the U.S., a term that was written to include TikTok and other apps operated by ByteDance. The law would have allowed TikTok to continue operating if ByteDance divested from the app.

However, upon taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump directed his attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days, a period that was later extended to June 19, 2025. Trump recently told NBC that he would be willing to provide another extension if a divestment deal wasn’t reached by the June deadline.

In the General Assembly, the bill’s prime sponsor, Republican state Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, said before the state Senate’s 49-0 vote that banning TikTok from state devices is warranted due to Chinese intelligence laws and practices. 

“More than 135 million active users in the United States today are on the app,” Phillips-Hill said on the Senate floor. “While we can discuss and debate the merits of the general public using the app on their personal devices, I do not think that it is appropriate or right that any government computer or network could allow access to this app that can essentially be used for espionage by the Chinese Communist Party.”

According to a report from Forbes, at least 39 states had taken action to restrict TikTok on government devices as of April 2024. In December 2022, Biden signed an omnibus spending bill into law that also included language banning TikTok and other ByteDance-produced successor apps from federal government devices. 

Senate Bill 376 now awaits action from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.