The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rescue TikTok from a law that would have required it to sell the popular short video app to Chinese parent company ByteDance or be banned in the U.S. on Sunday, citing national security. This is a major blow to the platform used by TikTok. Almost half of all Americans.
The justices ruled Friday that the law, passed last year by Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan majority and signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, violates First Amendment protections against government abridging free speech. The court unanimously ruled that it had not. After a challenge by TikTok, ByteDance, and some app users, the justices upheld a lower court ruling that upheld the measure.
“There is no question that TikTok provides a unique and far-reaching source of expression, participation, and community for more than 170 million Americans. “We find that the partition is necessary to address widely held national security concerns regarding relations with foreign adversaries,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
The court added, “We conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate appellant’s First Amendment rights.”
The Supreme Court acted quickly in this case, hearing arguments on January 10, just nine days before the deadline set under the law. The case pitted the right to free speech and national security concerns in the age of social media.
A White House statement suggested that Biden would not take any action to save TikTok before the legal Sunday sale deadline.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that “TikTok should continue to be available to Americans, but only because of U.S. ownership or the national security concerns that Congress identified when crafting this law.” “They should be made available under other titles that address security concerns,” he reiterated Biden’s position.
Jean-Pierre added that given the timing, action to implement the law “must be left to the next administration.”
Trump’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with CNN, Trump said it was up to him to decide on the future of the TikTok app, but what steps he would take. did not go into details.
“You’ll see what I do because ultimately it’s up to me,” Trump said. “Congress has made the decision, so I will make the decision.”
TikTok is one of the most prominent social media platforms in the United States, used by approximately 170 million Americans, about half of the U.S. population, including many young people. TikTok’s main asset is its powerful algorithm, which serves short videos tailored to individual users’ tastes.
China and the US are economic and geopolitical rivals, and China’s long-standing ownership of TikTok has raised concerns among US leaders. The TikTok battle unfolds in the waning days of Biden’s presidency, when Republican Donald Trump will succeed him on Monday, and at a time of heightened trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
In a post about TikTok, CEO Shou Zi Chew, in his first statement since a court upheld the ban, said: “We are looking forward to finding a solution to make TikTok available in the United States. We thank President Trump for his dedication to working with us to find this. Said. “This is a strong position in support of the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
“Significant threat”
Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Preloger said in arguments in the lawsuit that the Chinese government’s control of TikTok poses a “grave threat” to U.S. national security, and that China has amassed vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans. He said he was secretly trying to exert influence. Preloger said China is forcing companies like ByteDance to secretly hand over social media users’ data and carry out instructions from the Chinese government.
TikTok’s vast data set is a powerful tool that could be used by the Chinese government for harassment, recruitment, and espionage, and China “could use TikTok as a weapon to harm the United States at any time.” Preloger added.
This law was enacted in April last year. The Biden administration defended this in court. TikTok and ByteDance, as well as some users who post content on the apps, challenged the move and appealed to the Supreme Court after losing in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals on December 6.
President Trump’s opposition to the ban marks a reversal of his stance from his first term in office, when he sought to ban TikTok. President Trump said he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and said the app helped him reach young voters in the 2024 election.
In December, President Trump asked the Supreme Court to put the law on hold to give the incoming administration “an opportunity to pursue a political solution to the issues in the case.” But while Trump vowed to “save” TikTok, many of his Republican allies supported a ban.
President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Walz, said Thursday that the new administration will keep TikTok in the United States if there is a workable agreement. Walz said the incoming administration will “take steps to prevent TikTok from shutting down,” citing a provision in the law that allows for a 90-day extension if “significant progress” is made toward a sale.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that TikTok should be given more time to find a U.S. buyer and that he would work with the Trump administration “to keep TikTok alive while protecting national security.” Ta.
TikTok’s CEO will attend President Trump’s inauguration on Monday, sitting among other prominent guests.
TikTok said the law jeopardizes the First Amendment rights of all American citizens, not just TikTok and its users. TikTok said the ban would hurt its user base, advertisers, content creators and employee talent. TikTok has 7,000 employees in the United States.
Without Biden’s decision to formally implement the 90-day extension, companies that provide services to TikTok or host the app could face legal liability. It’s not immediately clear whether TikTok’s business partners, including Google, Apple and Oracle, will continue doing business with TikTok until Trump takes office.
Noel Francisco, a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance, told the Supreme Court that the app is “one of the most popular speech platforms in the United States” and that unless ByteDance makes a qualified sale, it will be “black market”. The law requires that the deceased be buried in
TikTok plans to cease operating its app in the United States on Sunday unless it is granted a last-minute reprieve.
Francisco said the U.S. government’s real target with the law is speech, specifically the fear that the American public will be “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” But the First Amendment leaves that up to the American people, not the government, Francisco said.