Arkansas committee debates bill to bar TikTok from government devices; sponsor pledges House amendment

Senate Bill 4, introduced to the State Agencies & Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 19, 2025, would prohibit state employees from downloading, using or visiting the TikTok application or website on government-issued devices. The bill sponsor said the Department of Human Services (DHS) uses TikTok in some child-welfare investigations and that the sponsor and DHS agreed to add a short amendment in the House to address those investigative uses.

The sponsor framed the measure as a cybersecurity and privacy safeguard, citing warnings from national officials about data flows to ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company. "This app should have been deleted 3 years ago," the sponsor told the committee, urging an immediate vote and promising a House amendment to clarify DHS needs. He also said some federal and private actors already block the app on government devices.

Several senators raised legal and drafting concerns. Senator Peyton asked what the bill’s use of the word "violation" would mean in practice; senators noted Arkansas law often treats "violation" as a classification below misdemeanor and asked whether a monetary amount or other penalty should be specified. Senator King and others questioned the durability of naming TikTok or ByteDance in statute: if an ownership change or company renaming occurs, they said, the text could lose coverage. Senator King also suggested giving the governor more flexibility to adapt to future corporate changes.

Senator Flowers emphasized that law-enforcement and prosecutors sometimes use social-media content in investigations and asked whether the amendment could preserve narrowly tailored exceptions. Other senators said the governor’s executive order already restricts TikTok on state devices and that the bill would put the prohibition into code; supporters argued statutory language offers permanence and enforcement where an executive order might change.

The sponsor said he had consulted the Attorney General’s office and that staff had not identified constitutional red flags to naming a company in statute. Committee members asked the sponsor to craft clearer definitions and penalty language in the planned House amendment. The sponsor pressed for a committee vote that day, but committee leadership recorded "no action" on the item; the sponsor said he would proceed with amendments in the House and return the bill as amended.