Supreme Court to hear TikTok case before ban deadline

Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times on Dec 18, 2024

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok's challenge to a law that would ban the popular social media app next month unless its Chinese owner sells it.

The case is set for oral argument on Jan. 10, nine days before TikTok is scheduled to be shut down in the U.S.

"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 court said in an order Wednesday.

TikTok's future in the U.S. has been uncertain since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app because of national security concerns.

Trump and others raised the prospect that ByteDance, which owns TikTok, could assist the Chinese government by sharing data it collects from its American users; embedding malicious software in the app; or helping to spread disinformation campaigns.

That set off years of back-and-forth between TikTok and the U.S. government. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that required ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to a non-Chinese entity or be shut down.

The companies responded by suing the U.S. government in May, saying a ban would violate 1st Amendment rights to free speech. They also said that the new law "offers no support for the idea" that TikTok's Chinese ownership poses national security risks.

"Speculative risk of harm is simply not enough when First Amendment values are at stake," TikTok and ByteDance said in their filing.

On Dec. 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law, paving the way for a Supreme Court showdown.

TikTok on Monday filed for an emergency injunction with the Supreme Court to buy more time before the nationwide ban is set to go into effect. The court declined to grant that request Wednesday.

More than 170 million Americans use the video app, on which people share dance routines, news stories, recipes and funny videos.

Free speech groups have warned that enforcing the ban would set a bad precedent.

"We should be concerned about this law as Americans who engage with one another on social media, but we should also be concerned about the global system of free expression," said George Wang, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

If the law is upheld, he said it's "hard to see where the stopping point is."

"Future bans of social media platforms are possible, but maybe also other forms of media," Wang said. "It really blesses the government's ability and authority to shut down entire platforms for speech on pretty vague national security justifications."