The US Supreme Court on Friday refused to block a federal law that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States from Sunday if the wildly popular video-sharing app does not divest from Chinese ownership.
The justices’ order was a blow for TikTok, prohibiting its operation in the lead-up to Monday’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to “save” the app.
Trump had asked the Supreme Court to delay implementation of the law to give him an opportunity to act once he returns to the White House. With the court declining that option and no sale of the app seemingly imminent, the ban is now poised to take effect on the eve of Trump’s inauguration.
The ban-or-sale law was passed in April with bipartisan support and signed by out-going President Joe Biden in response to national security concerns about the Chinese government’s potential influence over the platform.
With the Sunday deadline quickly approaching, the Supreme Court scheduled a special session last week to hear a First Amendment challenge from the company and TikTok creators. They said the government’s national security concerns do not justify an unprecedented, sweeping restriction on the speech of 170 million Americans who use the app for news, entertainment and self-expression.
At oral argument, a majority of justices appeared inclined to uphold the law, which requires TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform. They credited Congress’s concern about the Chinese government covertly using the app to collect vast amounts of sensitive data about millions of American users and potentially exploiting that information to blackmail young Americans or turn them into spies.
“That seems like a huge concern for the future of the country,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during the nearly three-hour argument.
Several justices from across the ideological spectrum also emphasized that foreign entities do not have First Amendment rights and that the site could continue to operate in a similar manner but under different, non-Chinese ownership.
