By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s decision to issue an executive order Monday delaying enforcement of the federal ban on TikTok has deepened a murky legal landscape in the US for the popular social media app and its technology partners.

While the order from the president effectively allowed the app to remain available to its 170 million users in the country, it did nothing to change the law, which took effect on Sunday and still looms large over the platform and other tech companies it needs to operate in the US, legal experts tell CNN.

Instead, the order represented an early use of Trump’s power to choose not to enforce certain federal laws. That authority, legal experts said, is broad, practically immune from judicial review and, for the companies at the center of the TikTok drama, likely too little too late.

“The president does not have the power to suspend the law, that’s not a presidential power. And so to the extent that Trump is saying the law is not enforced, no one’s violating it – those are not legally meaningful statements,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who specializes in tech law.

“At the same time, companies that are violating the law are still violating the law. So they are still at risk of pretty substantial legal exposure,” Rozenshtein added. “Trump could turn around and change his mind.”

The law – approved by Congress with bipartisan support last year and signed by President Joe Biden – requires only that TikTok’s technology partners – including Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s content in the US, and Apple and Google, which host the app in their app stores — stop supporting the app or face fines of up to $5,000 per person who has access to the platform starting Sunday.

Ahead of its January 19 effective date, the law also gave the president the option to extend the ban by 90 days, but triggering the extension required evidence that parties working on purchasing have made significant progress, including binding legal agreements for such a deal — and ahead of Sunday, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, hadn’t publicly updated its stance that the app is not for sale.

After going dark for a short time over the weekend, the social media app became available again in the US on Sunday afternoon. TikTok cited Trump’s promise on Sunday to not hold its partners liable for continuing to make the app available until he signed the order as the reason it was able to bring back American users’ access.

“The unfortunate timing of section 2(a) of the Act — one day before I took office as the 47th President of the United States — interferes with my ability to assess the national security and foreign policy implications of the Act’s prohibitions before they take effect,” Trump’s executive order said. “This timing also interferes with my ability to negotiate a resolution to avoid an abrupt shutdown of the TikTok platform while addressing national security concerns.”

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said he has “the right to make a deal” between the app and a potential US buyer.

“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, ‘Buy it and give half to the United States of America and we’ll give you the permit.’ And they’ll have a great partner, the United States,” he said.

Under the law, ByteDance will either sell to a new buyer – despite stating it has no intention of doing so – or the Trump administration would need to enact a new law to overturn the previous one, an improbable scenario given the strong bipartisan support the existing legislation received in Congress. As of Monday, the app had some potential buyers, including YouTube and TikTok star MrBeast, who is looking to buy the app as part of a group of investors. Trump also floated Elon Musk as a possibility.

How tech world has responded to the uncertainty

TikTok’s tech partners have approached the messy legal landscape two different ways: Oracle has assumed the risk that comes with not abiding by the federal sale-or-ban law.

But as of Tuesday afternoon, TikTok remains unavailable on Google and Apple’s app stores, reflecting those companies’ measured decision to not open themselves up to legal exposure.

“Companies that choose not to comply are thinking, ‘There’s some risk that the executive order could be rescinded, they could come after me,’” said Daniel Deacon, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who is an expert in administrative law.

“I really imagine that for these companies that it’s really just a cost-benefit analysis about it’s either worth it or not to engage in activity that’s subjecting me to some level of risk that my lawyers are informing me of,” Deacon added.

What about the courts?

Unlike the TikTok ban, which faced two major legal challenges that were ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court, Trump’s executive order on TikTok is unlikely to be met with legal challenges, experts said, because it would be extremely difficult for potential plaintiffs to demonstrate that they’ve been harmed by the government’s actions here.

“Often, the problem with non-enforcement is it’s removing legal burdens instead of imposing them. So people in some sense are benefited rather than hurt,” said Zachary Price, a legal scholar at the University of California College of the Law San Francisco who has written about criminal and civil law enforcement.

“There’s then a second question, which is, courts are often reluctant to review enforcement choices,” he added. “They tend to view those as kind of an executive prerogative.”

Anupam Chander, a professor at Georgetown Law, agreed that the executive order could be largely safe from legal challenges because of the procedural issues a potential plaintiff would face.

But, he added, members of Congress who passed the law and want to see if enforced might be able to clear the threshold issues that would arise in a potential lawsuit targeting the order.

“It’s not clear to me that any member of Congress would be likely to sue Donald Trump,” Chander said. “This was largely a Republican initiative within Congress. So I’m skeptical that you’re going to see lawsuits along this way.”

CNN’s Clare Duffy and David Goldman contributed to this report.

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