The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban on the popular social video app in the US.
ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many US users could lose access to the app this weekend. The app may still work for those who already have TikTok on their phones, although ByteDance has also threatened to shut down the app.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in April.
“There is no question that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok provides a unique and expansive avenue for expression, a means of engagement, and a resource for community,” the Supreme Court’s opinion said. “But Congress has determined that the overreach is necessary to address its well-founded national security concerns about TikTok’s data collection practices and dealings with a foreign adversary.”
Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote concurrences.
TikTok’s fate in the US now rests in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who in December asked the Supreme Court to halt enforcement and allow his administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the issues at hand in this matter.”
Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, a day after TikTok’s sale deadline. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is one of several tech leaders expected to be in attendance, sitting in the square.
The country’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” TikTok’s sheer size and “its susceptibility to foreign adversary control, along with a much of the sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern.
Under the terms of the law, third-party Internet service providers like Apple AND Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the January 19 deadline.
If internet service providers and app store owners agree, they will remove TikTok from their respective app stores, preventing users from downloading TikTok or installing the necessary updates that make the app functional.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated President Biden’s support for the law in a statement, saying that “TikTok should remain available to Americans, but only under American or other ownership that addresses national security concerns.” identified by Congress in the development of this law.
“Given the absolute fact of the time, this administration recognizes that enforcement action should simply be left to the next administration, which takes office on Monday,” Pierre said.
Kate Ruane, director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision, saying in a statement that it “damages the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world.”
“Individuals use the app to create, share information, get their news, comment on current affairs and promote their businesses — exactly the kind of expression the First Amendment is meant to protect,” Ruane said.
In December, members of the Chinese Communist Party’s House Select Committee sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai urging the executives to begin preparations to comply with the law and reminded them of their duties as app store operators. .
Last Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers representing TikTok, content creators and the US government. TikTok’s lead attorney, Noel Francisco, argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the app’s 170 million US users. Meanwhile, US Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar countered that the app’s alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China through its parent ByteDance pose a national security threat. Â
Following the conclusion of oral arguments, many legal experts believed the country’s highest court appeared to be more favorable to the US government’s case involving TikTok’s alleged dubious ties to the Chinese government.
Many TikTok creators have told their fans to find them on competing social platforms like Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, CNBC reported. In addition, Instagram executives scheduled meetings after the Supreme Court hearing last Friday to instruct workers to prepare for a wave of users if the court upholds the law, the CNBC report said.
Chinese social media app and TikTok-like RedNote climbed to the top of Apple’s app store on Monday, showing that millions of TikTok users were looking for alternatives.
The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have Elon Musk take over TikTok’s US operations as part of several options aimed at keeping the app from being effectively banned in the US, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. The plan was one of several the Chinese government was considering as part of larger discussions involving working with the Trump White House, the report said.
In the event that ByteDance decides to sell TikTok to a US company or a group of investors, potential buyers could have to pay between $40 billion and $50 billion, according to an estimate by CFRA’s Senior Vice President of Research, Angelo Zino.
Friendships: SCOTUS hears TikTok ban case.
