The Supreme Court on Friday heard arguments in TikTok‘s emergency appeal seeking to block a federal law from going into effect that would ban the popular video app unless Chinese parent ByteDance sells its stake.
TikTok and ByteDance argued that the law, set to take effect Jan. 19, violates the First Amendment of its 170 million U.S. users by categorically banning the platform unless ByteDance divests ownership. But while several Supreme Court justices acknowledged that the law raises free-speech issues, a majority of them — through their questions and comments during the hearing — indicated that national security concerns of the government were the prevailing matter at hand.
“The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said during the hearing. “It says ByteDance has to divest” the company’s ownership stake in the app.
Supporters of the law — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — have claimed it is not a ban because it offers ByteDance a choice: to divest TikTok’s U.S. business or be shut down. TikTok and ByteDance have argued that “in reality, there is no choice. The ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
The court is expected to issue a decision relatively quickly given the expedited schedule for the case — and given that the law is set to go into effect Jan. 19.
President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law on April 24, 2024, after it passed in Congress with solid bipartisan support. U.S. lawmakers have expressed deep concern about TikTok’s Chinese ownership, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime could use the app to spy on Americans or use it to promulgate pro-China propaganda.
More to come
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