Washington — The Supreme Court said Thursday it could announce the opinion as early as Friday morning, a last-minute addition to the schedule that comes just two days before the law banning TikTok is set to take effect.
“The court may announce the opinion on the homepage from 10 am onwards,” a notice said. Court website Said without specifying on which case or cases the decision may be taken. “The court will not take the bench.”
The legislation would cut TikTok off from US app stores and hosting services if TikTok does not sever ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, before the January 19 deadline.
It seemed that the Supreme Court will upload this law when it does so heard the arguments Last week on TikTok's legal challenge, judges appeared sympathetic to the government's claims that China could use TikTok to collect vast amounts of data on its US users and spy on them.
Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance, said the potential Supreme Court decision is “highly consequential” for the platform's 170 million users in the US and their free speech rights.
If the law is not stopped or overturned by Sunday, “we will go into darkness,” Francisco said last week. “The platform has been shut down,” he said, later clarifying that TikTok would no longer be available in the US app stores.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Preloger said the “unprecedented amount” of personal data collected by TikTok would give the Chinese government “a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment, and espionage.” He cited several data breaches the US has blamed on China over the past decade, including the hack of the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the personal information of millions of federal employees.
“For years, the Chinese government has been trying to build detailed profiles about Americans, including where we live and work, who our friends and colleagues are, what our interests are and what our vices are,” Pregoler said.
In April, Congress swiftly passed bipartisan legislation as part of the foreign aid package, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Enemy Controlled Applications Act, and it was signed into law by President Biden. It gave TikTok nine months to sever ties with its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, with the possibility of a 90-day extension if the sale continued by the January deadline. Due to lack of sales, TikTok has lost access to app stores and web-hosting services in the US
Lawmakers and intelligence agencies have long been suspicious of the app's ties to China and have argued that concerns are justified because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate in intelligence gathering.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge May called the law “an extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” based on “speculation and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation” that would suppress the speech of millions of Americans.
A federal appeals court issued a ruling in December that upheld the law, saying the U.S. government had “solely defended that freedom from a foreign enemy nation and that anti-government sentiment by collecting data on people in the United States.” Worked to limit capacity.” A week later, the appeals court rejected TikTok's attempt to delay the law going into effect, pending a Supreme Court review.
On December 16, TikTok Asked The Supreme Court asked for a temporary stay, saying it would suffer “immediate irreparable harm” if the High Court did not delay the ban. Two days later, the Supreme Court said it would hear the challenge to the law under an accelerated timeline.