Marketers in promo and beyond that use TikTok, take note: A bill that would pave the way for banning the controversial social media platform cleared a key hurdle in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 28.

In a 24 to 16 vote, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to send bill H.R. 1153 to the full House of Representatives for consideration, McLaurine Pinover, the committee’s deputy communications director, confirmed to ASI Media.

There’s not yet a firm date for the entire House to consider/vote on the bill, Pinover added. While the legislation wouldn’t specifically ban TikTok, it would effectively empower President Joe Biden to do so, legislative analysts said.

The bill, proposed by Texas Republican Rep. Mike McCaul, is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled House. Its fate in the Democrat-controlled Senate is less certain, but amid heightened bipartisan national security concerns around China there’s at least potential for the bill to gain traction and become law, some analysts have stated.

China-based ByteDance owns TikTok, a wildly popular social platform for hosting short-form videos that’s used by an estimated 100 million Americans. Some marketers and influencers in the promotional products industry use the platform to engage audiences, as do their counterparts in many other industries.

Legislators from both major parties have raised concerns that, with ByteDance being required to make TikTok’s data available to China’s ruling Communist Party, the app is a threat to U.S. national security. They’ve asserted that TikTok is used to spy on Americans and otherwise enable Beijing to have a shadow influence on American society.

“Currently, the courts have questioned the administration’s authority to sanction TikTok,” McCaul said this week. “My bill empowers the administration to ban TikTok or any software applications that threaten U.S. national security.”

How does H.R. 1153 do that? By revising the so-called Berman amendments, established toward the end of the Cold War. The practical effect of those amendments and subsequent court interpretations of them is that the federal government is prohibited from using sanctions to inhibit trade in information materials, including digital information, to or from a foreign country.

McCaul’s H.R. 1153 would make it so that Berman amendments exemptions that have guarded TikTok from a ban to date would no longer apply to companies that transfer Americans’ personal data to entities or people based in, or controlled by, China.

Other legislators have proposed TikTok bans in the House and the Senate, but that legislation has not yet moved out of committee – a necessary early step in the legislative process. Due to national security concerns, President Donald Trump was also interested in a TikTok clampdown before being voted out of office.

Critics of a TikTok ban, which include the American Civil Liberties Union, say prohibiting the platform is an impingement on free speech.

A TikTok ban would “limit Americans’ political discussion, artistic expression, free exchange of ideas — and even prevent people from posting cute animal videos and memes,” the ACLU said in a letter to lawmakers. “Americans have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas and opinions with people around the country and around the world.”