The Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok‘s appeal for an emergency injunction blocking a federal law that would ban the popular video app unless Chinese parent ByteDance sells its stake.
The high court’s decision in the matter is a test of where the justices come down in weighing American’s constitutionally protected right to free speech with the U.S. government’s interests in maintaining national security.
The Supreme Court scheduled arguments to hear TikTok’s appeal on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025, which is an expedited timeline that will let the court consider the issue before the law is set to take effect on Jan. 19. According to the court’s docket, a total of two hours is allotted for oral argument. “The parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment,” the Supreme Court’s docket listing for the case says.
TikTok on Monday filed the appeal with the Supreme Court seeking the emergency injunction, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s argument that the law unconstitutionally stifled the First Amendment.
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“We’re pleased with today’s Supreme Court order,” TikTok said in a statement. “We believe the Court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights.”
The law’s bipartisan backers have argued that it is not a “ban” of TikTok per se, because it would allow TikTok to continue to be distributed in the U.S. if ByteDance divests its stake in TikTok to a party or parties not based in a country the U.S. designates a “foreign adversary.”
The D.C. Circuit, in a unanimous 3-0 ruling issued Dec. 6, said the law does “not target speech based upon its communicative content. The TikTok-specific provisions instead straightforwardly require only that TikTok divest its platform as a precondition to operating in the United States.” According to the court, the U.S. government “has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security.”
In the absence of a “qualified divestiture” by ByteDance, the TikTok ban will go into effect Jan. 19. The law gives the U.S. president the ability to grant a one-time extension of “not more than 90 days” if the president determines that ByteDance has a legitimate sales negotiation in progress to sell its TikTok stake; if that’s the case, the sell-or-ban date would be April 19, 2025.
President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law on April 24 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.
In an amicus brief submitted to the high court Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s request for an emergency injunction. “TikTok is a wildly popular social-media application under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the senator wrote. The “clear national-security threat posed by this application” prompted Congress to pass the law, which, by forcing a sale by ByteDance, would “remove[] the control of this popular application from the primary geopolitical opponent of the United States.”
McConnell wrote that “Any such injunction will move the divesture date beyond that prescribed by law —and into a new presidential administration. TikTok clearly hopes that the next administration will be more sympathetic to its plight than the incumbent administration. In other words, delay is the point.”
President-elect Donald Trump was noncommittal when he was asked at a press conference Monday whether he would try to knock down the TikTok law, responding, “We’ll take a look at TikTok.” Trump added, “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” because of his belief that the app helped drive young voters toward his side of the ballot. Trump was set to meet with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago compound on Monday.
During his first term as president, Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to force ByteDance to sell majority control in TikTok to U.S. owners, also citing national security fears. An attempt by the Trump administration to force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban was found unconstitutional by federal courts on First Amendment grounds. A year ago, a federal judge blocked Montana’s first-of-its-kind statewide ban of TikTok, ruling that the law likely violated the First Amendment.
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Chew, at a 2023 hearing held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asserted that “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.” ByteDance has said 60% of its ownership is represented by “global institutional investors” including Blackrock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group.
TikTok has argued that the law infringes the free-speech rights of its 170 million U.S. users and would “devastate” the millions of businesses on the platform. The company claims TikTok contributed more than $24 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023.