Ahead of the Supreme Court‘s Jan. 10 hearing on whether to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to prevent it from being banned by the U.S. government, several groups and members of Congress have weighed in on the issue — both against the law, arguing it violates First Amendment rights of TikTok’s users, and in support of the ban because of national security concerns over its Chinese parent company.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok’s appeal for an emergency injunction blocking a federal law — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — that will ban the popular video app unless Chinese parent ByteDance sells its stake. The high court scheduled arguments to hear TikTok’s appeal on Friday, Jan. 10, on 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 said.
Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), filed an amicus brief with the court Friday in support of TikTok’s appeal. “All three are strong advocates of free expression and are deeply concerned that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will deprive millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights,” they said in the brief.
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“The TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny,” Markey, Paul and Khanna wrote. “Its only historical parallels are illegitimate. Its principal justification — preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government — reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative. And its secondary justification of protecting users’ data from the Chinese government could not sustain the ban on its own and also overlooks that Congress did not consider whether less drastic mitigation measures could address those concerns.”
Also backing TikTok in an amicus brief were eight free-speech groups — the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute, Fight for the Future and Public Knowledge. In their brief, they noted “the government has not presented credible evidence of ongoing or imminent harm caused by TikTok.”
“Banning TikTok would trample on the constitutional rights of over 170 million Americans,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “This social media platform has allowed people around the world to tell their own stories in key moments of social upheaval, war and natural disaster while reaching immense global audiences. The government’s attempt to cut U.S. users off from speaking and sharing on TikTok is extraordinary and unprecedented.” He added that TikTok “is a unique forum for expression online — and the connections and community that so many have built there cannot be easily replaced. TikTok creators can’t simply transfer their audiences and followers to another app, and TikTok users can’t simply reassemble the many voices they’ve discovered on the platform.”
In a separate amicus brief, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Free Press and PEN America also urged the Supreme Court to strike down the federal TikTok ban. In their brief, the groups argued the law is viewpoint-motivated because it “forecloses an entire medium of expression online.” The group claimed the government has no legitimate interest in banning Americans from accessing foreign speech, even if that speech reflects foreign manipulation, and that while the government has a legitimate interest in protecting U.S. citizens from covert propaganda and safeguarding their personal data, those interests can be achieved through less restrictive means.
“Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Upholding the ban would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy.”
On the other side, seven human-rights groups — which said they are “dedicated to shedding light on the blatant human rights violations occurring in the People’s Republic of China” — filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in favor of the TikTok divest-or-ban law. The groups (Campaign for Uyghurs, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Watch, International Campaign for Tibet, Uyghur American Association, Uyghur Human Rights Project and Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) argued the law is constitutional and a “necessary step toward protecting the physical and digital safety of those who seek to illuminate the atrocities occurring in the PRC.”
“TikTok under its current corporate structure is a clear instrument for the CCP to harass, target and silence activists and dissidents in the U.S., the PRC, and around the world,” the group said. “In sum, we stand for the proposition that the U.S. Constitution does not protect a PRC company’s right to act as an unregistered foreign agent — covertly shaping the American information environment through a nonexpressive algorithm at the instruction of a foreign adversary government.”
According to the law, in the absence of a “qualified divestiture” by ByteDance, the TikTok ban will go into effect Jan. 19 — unless the law is blocked by the Supreme Court. 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.
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a Dec. 6 ruling rejected TikTok’s argument that the law unconstitutionally infringes Americans’ First Amendment rights, TikTok and ByteDance filed the appeal with the Supreme Court seeking the emergency injunction.
The D.C. Circuit, in its unanimous 3-0 ruling, 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.”
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.
The law’s 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.”
In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court on Dec. 18, 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 earlier this month whether he would try to reverse 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.
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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. Trump’s divest-or-ban executive order 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.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, at a March 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.