Supreme Court will hear challenge to TikTok ban

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok should be banned in the United States, agreeing on Wednesday to an expedited briefing schedule to consider the constitutionality of prohibitions on the app’s foreign ownership.

The justices deferred a ruling on whether to pause the ban before a Jan. 19 deadline, deciding instead to hear oral arguments on Jan. 10 over whether to pause a congressional ban on foreign ownership that threatens to tank the app’s future in the U.S.

A bipartisan law seeks to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, relinquishes ownership. Lawmakers say that the China-based ByteDance threatens national security, suggesting that the Chinese government could gain access to troves of U.S. user data for nefarious schemes.

TikTok refutes claims that U.S. user data could be accessed by the Chinese government. According to the app, the California-based TikTok Inc. operates the platform in the U.S. and the recommendation engine operates on U.S-based Oracle servers.

While ByteDance owns subsidiaries in China, the company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Global investors, employees and one of TikTok’s founders, Zhang Yiming, a Chinese national who lives in Singapore, all own shares of the app.

TikTok faults the U.S. government for not completing a joint national security agreement guarding against foreign manipulation of TikTok’s content-moderation practices. The company spent over $2 billion on what came to be known as Project Texas before negotiations halted in September 2022. The company says senior government officials interfered with the agreement by pushing for divestment instead of explaining the accord’s insufficiencies.

TikTok brought a case before the D.C. Circuit, arguing that the law unconstitutionally limited speech rights.

“The government admits that in the years it has had concerns about TikTok, it has found no evidence that any foreign adversary has manipulated the content Americans see or misappropriated their private data,” TikTok wrote. “It instead justifies the Act based on a ‘potential risk’ of what ‘could’ happen in the future.”

Earlier this month, the appeals court ruled that although the law restricted speech, it was constitutional because of its narrow tailoring to address a compelling government interest.

The D.C. Circuit refused to put its ruling on hold to allow the Supreme Court to review the case.

TikTok urged the Supreme Court to review its appeal, arguing that U.S. lawmakers had unconstitutionally barred Americans from one of the most significant speech platforms in the nation.

The app said it needed a response from the justices by Jan. 6 to conform to the Jan. 19 impending ban.

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