It is doubtful that the Judge will let the WeChat ban move ahead in the U.S. appeal.

A judge said she is unlikely to authorize the U.S. to impose WeChat bans as the government appeals to block them from her previous decision.

At hearing on Thursday: 

At a hearing Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler stated she was not willing to grant the government’s application for a stay awaiting appeal. The additional information given by the Justice Department to support its national security concerns has not altered her assessment that the bans will trample on the rights of millions of Chinese-speaking Americans who rely on the app to talk freely, Beeler said.

The decision by Judge:

At the hearing, the San Francisco judge did not make a definitive ruling on the government’s application. Separately, the Justice Department questioned the U.S. In San Francisco, the Court of Appeals would place Beeler’s preliminary injunction on hold during the appeals process.

 Trump to ban WeChat:

The Trump administration wants to withdraw WeChat from U.S. mobile app stores and enforce other limitations that U.S. customers say represent an outright ban. WeChat’s owner, Tencent Holdings Ltd., is connected, according to the administration, to the Chinese Communist Party, that can use the app to gather and spy on data from users.

Serena Orloff Said:

Serena Orloff, a lawyer from the Justice Department, said at the hearing that the amount of information the CCP can access about U.S. WeChat users, including doctor appointments and medical records, is enormous.

“It creates a digital facsimile of the life of an entity,” Orloff said.

The Judge agreed with the U.S. Users: 

On September 20, the day they were scheduled to go into effect, Beeler blocked the prohibitions provided by the U.S. Commerce Department. The Judge agreed with the U.S. users that the limitations were likely to breach the rights of users who rely on it almost entirely for certain aspects of their lives under the First Amendment.

The Demand for Chinese Apps:

The “mega app” in the Chinese language, which has functions for messaging, social media, and mobile payments, has 19 million daily users in the U.S. and 1 billion internationally.

As well as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, another Chinese-owned smartphone app restricted by the Trump administration over supposed national security concerns, WeChat users have claimed that the U.S. bans were motivated rather than legitimate security concerns by election-year politics.

The issue is Alliance of U.S. WeChat members v. Trump, 3:20-cv-5910, U.S. District Court, Northern California District (San Francisco).