BREAKING: TikTok sues the US government over law forcing sale or ban

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday could lead to a lengthy legal battle over TikTok's future in the United States.

The popular social video company alleges that the law, signed by U.S. President Joe Biden as part of a larger $95 billion US foreign aid package, is "obviously unconstitutional." The sponsors of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act are attempting to portray the law not as a ban, but as a regulation of TikTok's ownership.

"Congress has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning TikTok: a vibrant online forum for protected speech and expression used by 170 million Americans to create, share, and view videos over the Internet," ByteDance said in its suit.

"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide."

The law requires TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform within nine months. If a sale is already in progress, the company will have another three months to complete the deal. ByteDance has stated that it "doesn't have any plan to sell TikTok."

However, even if it wanted to divest, the company would need approval from Beijing, which previously opposed a forced sale of the platform and has signaled its opposition this time around.

TikTok and ByteDance argue in the lawsuit that they are not really being given a choice.