WeChat users sue to block Donald Trump’s ban on messaging app

A group of WeChat users asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from imposing a ban on what they say appears to be all uses of the Chinese messaging app in the U.S. over national security concerns.

In a complaint filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco, Chinese-American lawyers who formed the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance claim President Donald Trump’s planned restriction on the app is unconstitutional. His Aug. 6 order bans Americans from carrying out transactions with WeChat and TikTok, another Chinese social media platform, as of mid-September.

The “vaguely worded” executive order doesn’t define what transactions will be prohibited and leaves individuals and companies at a loss whether they will violate the president’s order if they don’t fundamentally change the way they communicate or run their businesses, according to the lawyers.