TikTok’s US operations will shut 19 January unless the US Supreme Court intervenes to kill or delay a law aimed at forcing its sale by its Chinese parent company.
Earlier this year, a bill aimed to force Bytedance, TikTok’s Chinese parent, to sell the platform passed both the US Senate and House of Representatives with bipartisan support.
US officials had said that the Chinese government could compel Bytedance to hand over information on US users or use the platform to spread or supress information.
Supreme Court justices will hear arguments over the fate of TikTok on Friday US time. The ban is currently set to come into effect on 20 January, giving the respective sides and the judges very little time to make their arguments and decide.
“Absent such relief, the Act will take effect on January 19, 2025,” TikTok said in a legal filing on 9 December.
“That would shut down TikTok—one of the Nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration.”
TikTok had no further comment when reached by B&T.
The justices will also have a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who earlier dropped his support for a ban, in the hopes that his administration would reach a “political resolution”.
At the moment, it’s unclear whether the court will take the Republican president-elect’s views into account—something CBS News said would be “highly unusual”.
TikTok, Bytedance as well as content creators and the app’s users say that the law would violate the US Constitution’s free speech guarantee.
“Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” lawyers for the users and content creators wrote.
Obviously, TikTok’s legion of US content creators could be set to lose a large chunk of their earnings if the app were banned.
TikTok has also told the justices that while the US government believes that the Chinese government could force Bytedance to hand over information on US users, “it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so”.
In December, a panel of three appeals judges, two appointed by Republicans and one by a Democrat, unanimously upheld the law and rejected the free speech infringement claims.
Trump’s lawyers have submitted a legal brief to the court which sounds more like a campaign ad than anything else.
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” wrote D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice to be his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer.
Trump took no position on the underlying merits of the case, Sauer wrote. Trump currently has 14.7 million TikTok glowers and he met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, last month.
Should the law take effect, Trump’s Justice Department will be charged with enforcing it.
The ramifications of a TikTok ban in the US would likely be felt around the world. Though given the incoming Trump administration’s spasmodic approach to policy decisions, it is nearly impossible to predict what might happen next.
