Washington – The Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it will challenge the new law TikTok may be banned in AmericaSetting up a showdown over access to a widely popular app used by millions of Americans.
The arguments will be heard by the High Court on January 10, an accelerated deadline that allows the court to consider the issue before the law takes effect on January 19.
The Supreme Court said in a short order Lawyers for the Justice Department and TikTok, as well as a group of users challenging the law separately, should be prepared to argue whether the ban passed by Congress violates the First Amendment.
TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, asked the high court earlier this week to temporarily block law enforcement while he appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Supreme Court said in its order that the consideration of that request for emergency relief is postponed until oral arguments take place.
tiktok ban
TikTok's lawyers wrote in their request to the Supreme Court, “Congress's unprecedented effort to exclude the applicants and prevent them from operating one of the most important speech platforms in this nation presents serious constitutional problems, which this Court will likely address.” Won't let me stand.”
TikTok suffered a blow on December 6 when a panel of three judges of the DC Circuit announced that Denied his attempt to overturn the lawA week later, the appeals court rejected TikTok's request to delay the law going into effect pending Supreme Court review.
The law, which Congress passed in April as part of a foreign aid package, gives TikTok nine months to sever ties with its Chinese parent company ByteDance or immediately lose access to US President Biden's app store and web-hosting services. Was given a month's time. signed the bill into lawAnd it is set to take effect on January 19, with a one-time 90-day delay allowed by the President if the sale is ongoing.
President-elect Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office, but during the presidential campaign he reversed his position and vowed to “save” the app. He told reporters during a press conference on Monday that the platform played a role in helping him win the youth vote in the November election and said he would “take a look at TikTok.”
He said, “I have a warm heart for TikTok.” The same day, Trump Meet Shaw Chew, CEO of TikTok At his Mar-a-Lago property.
With January 10 set for arguments in the Supreme Court, it will be the Biden administration that will present the government's case. TikTok is represented before the high court by Noel Francisco, who served as Solicitor General during Trump's first term.
Still, TikTok is hopeful that either the Supreme Court or Trump will save it.
In its December 6 ruling, the appeals court determined that the U.S. government's concerns about the Chinese government's collection of Americans' data and its ability to covertly manipulate content on the platform constitute a “compelling national security interest.” . The court called the government's concerns “well-founded”, and rejected TikTok's arguments that the risks were imaginary.
The appeals court said it recognized that its decision would have a “significant impact” on TikTok and its users.
“As a result, TikTok's millions of users will need to find an alternative means of communication,” Senior Justice Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the court. “That burden is responsible for [People’s Republic of China’s] “The hybrid commercial threat is to US national security, not to the US government, which has engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”
When it challenged the law in May, TikTok insisted it never had a choice between divestment or a ban because a forced sale “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technically, not legally.” Form.” The Chinese government has vowed to block the sale of TikTok's algorithms that tailor content recommendations to each user. A new buyer would be forced to recreate the algorithms that power the app. The petition states that “such a fundamental restructuring is not remotely possible” under the restrictions within the law.
“The platform consists of millions of lines of software code that has been painstakingly developed by thousands of engineers over many years,” the petition says.