Tipsheet

Here's What TikTok Had to Say After Federal Court Upheld Law Banning App

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  December 06, 2024 1:00 PM

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring TikTok’s parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States. 

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States. For these reasons the petitions are denied,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit wrote in denying TikTok’s petition. 

The law, signed earlier this year by President Biden, requires ByteDance to divest from TikTok by Jan. 19 or face a U.S. ban.

TikTok and ByteDance sued to block the law in May, alongside several content creators, arguing that divestment was practically impossible. As a result, the law effectively bans TikTok nationwide, which they contend is unconstitutional. 

However, the Biden administration has argued that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government to “achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests.” 

The court sided with the Biden administration, finding that the “significant” impacts of the TikTok ban are justified by the government’s national security concerns.

“Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by January 19, 2025 — or the President grants a 90-day extension based upon progress towards a qualified divestiture — its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” the court wrote in Friday’s opinion.

“Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication,” it continued. “That burden is attributable to the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”  (The Hill)

The company on Friday said it is appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court. 

"The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," the company said. "Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025."

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