Federal Court Upholds U.S. Ban on TikTok
The fight over whether TikTok remains legal in the U.S. could be heading to the Supreme Court.
On Friday, the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a federal law that will ban TikTok in the country over national security concerns — unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells its interest in the app by Jan. 19, 2025. In the ruling, the court rejected TikTok and ByteDance’s argument that the law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of the video app’s users.
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“The multi-year efforts of both political branches to investigate the national security risks posed by the TikTok platform, and to consider potential remedies proposed by TikTok, weigh heavily in favor of the Act,” the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit wrote. “[T]he parts of the Act that are properly before this court do not contravene the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, nor do they violate the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws.”
TikTok didn’t immediately provide comment on Friday’s ruling.
In their lawsuit seeking to overturn the law, filed in May, TikTok and ByteDance argued the the law is “obviously unconstitutional.” “Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership,” the lawsuit said.
The law specifies that, in the absence of a “qualified divestiture” by ByteDance, the TikTok ban will go into effect 270 days (nine months) after its enactment, which would be Jan. 19, 2025. In addition, the law gives the U.S. president the ability to grant a one-time extension of “not more than 90 days” if the president determines that ByteDance has a legitimate sales negotiation in progress to sell its TikTok stake. That would make the sell-or-ban date April 19, 2025.
President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law on April 24, after it passed in Congress with solid bipartisan support. The legislation requires ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok within nine months (with a potential 90-day extension to the deadline) to a party or parties not based in a country the U.S. designates a “foreign adversary” and if it doesn’t, the distribution of TikTok would be outlawed.
About 50% of Americans support a TikTok ban, while 32% oppose it and 18% are not sure, according to an Ipsos/Reuters survey earlier this year. Just 31% of those 18-34 say they are in favor of a ban, and 50% say they oppose it. Most Americans 35-54 (54%) and 55 and older (60%) say they support a ban of the app.
Prior to the law’s enactment, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, suggested TikTok and ByteDance are “weaponizing” data and AI to spy on Americans, including journalists covering the company. In 2022, ByteDance said it fired four employees for “misconduct” after the company found they accessed TikTok data on several users, including two reporters.
Per the Ipsos/Reuters poll, 90% of U.S. adults believe content creators would migrate to alternative platforms if TikTok were banned. In addition, 45% said they worry a TikTok ban would negatively impact small businesses or performing artists, and 46% agree that a ban would infringe free-speech rights.
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