The US Supreme Court is hearing plans to over-sell or ban TikTok
The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Friday on TikTok. It’s the latest battle in a long battle over whether to block the most popular social media app in the US – and it will force justices to weigh the importance of national security with freedom of speech.
TikTok and its parent company, Chinese-based ByteDance, asked the Supreme Court to review the case later. The lower court ruled last month to protect the law in the US to move the app. That ban will go into effect on January 19 unless ByteDance sells TikTok assets to a non-Chinese company. While ByteDance has the option to divest, it stated in a legal filing that a divestment “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
Oral arguments are expected for the last two hours, during which each side will be allotted time to state their case. In filingThe court wrote that both sides were prepared to argue whether the ban violated the First Amendment.
We’ll bring you all the latest from the hearing, starting at 10am ET.
Key events
Donald Trump might stop in TikTok forbid?
Trump has filed a request with the Supreme Court to delay the implementation of the ban on TikTok until he takes office on January 20, which the court has refused to do immediately. The president-elect’s intervention shows a significant effort by TikTok to build alliances with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.
“President Trump gets no position on the merits of this underlying controversy,” said John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, who is also the president’s pick for U.S. solicitor general.
“Indeed, he respectfully requests that the Court consider the deadline for the repeal of the Act to be stayed on January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus allowing President Trump the ability of the incoming administration to pursue a political solution to the problems in the results. cause,” he added.
It will be up to President Trump to interpret how the ban-or-sale bill is enforced. If the law is established, he can break it by directing the US Justice Department to demand penalties for delays or the sector of the deal declares that it meets the threshold for divestment. The Cato Institute, a right-wing thinktank in Washington, DC, said in an analysis of the matter: “The new administration could approve “eligible assets” or even extend the deadline by waiving penalties under the ban if it were to force the sale to not take place by January 19 or by an extended deadline.”
Less than two weeks after the federal appeals court ruled, TikTok filed an sudden movement asking the supreme court to stop the enforcement of the law. Supreme judgment agreed to review the request and oral arguments to be prepared. The court received about two dozen amicus briefs, or “friend of the court” briefs, from each side of the dispute.
He was the chief of them filed by Donald Trump himself He asked the court to delay the ban, which was to take effect before his inauguration, so that his administration could “pursue a negotiated settlement.”
“President Trump alone has the expertise, electoral mandate, and political will to save the resolution,” the brief read. “Such a resolution would meet the need for this Court to decide the most difficult issues.”
A little later Joseph Biden He signed the act into law: TikTok obtained by the US government he objected in an attempt. The company argues that the ban violates, unfairly welcomes TikTok, and violates the First Amendment and the right to free speech.
The law will force the shutdown TikTok … allowing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere,” TikTok wrote in its complaint.
Three Judges for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia He reigned in favor in the last month of the government. They said a possible threat to US national security is the loss of people’s access to social media sites.
The justices also said that the First Amendment protects free speech for people in the US and “Government has the exclusive right to defend that freedom from foreign national adversaries.”
What will happen? TikTok if the app gets banned?
New users will not be able to download TikTok from app stores and existing users will not be able to update the app, because the law prohibits any entity from downloading the application or maintaining TikTok. In a December 13 letter, lawmakers told Apple and Alphabet’s Google, which operate the two main mobile apps, that they are prepared to remove TikTok from their stores on January 19.
Cloud service provider Oracle could see some disruption to its work with TikTok. Oracle hosts TikTok’s US user data on its servers, reviews the app’s source code and delivers the app to the app. Google declined to comment, while Oracle and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Federal law on TikTok They passed very well senate and court on the first day of April. A year later, Montana became the first TikTok state, despite the judge blocked, because the law on the basis of free speech.
The law, best known for the Protection of America from Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act, was signed into law by Joe Biden last spring. Two years later he became president The federal government banned TikTok on phones and laptops.
The US government has consistently said TikTok it is a national security risk. Lawmakers say China has control over what people see on the app and how it spreads. They also fear that China could gain access to sensitive American data and monitor their behavior.
“Your platform is basically an exploration of the platforms of the Chinese Communist Party.” he said Joseph HawleyRepublican senator of Missouri, in the Senate Judiciary election last January, hearing with the CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew.
To date, the US government has not uncovered evidence that Beijing or ByteDance manipulated the use of TikTok to target Americans.
TikTok has 170 million users on the platform, about half of the country’s population, and the prospect of banning the app has gathered unexpected partners. On the one hand there are those who announce the ban, saying TikTok power is handled by the Chinese Communist Party, which includes a bipartisan coalition of Congress members.
On the other hand there are innumerable authorities, civil liberties and more recently; Donald Trumpwho first proposed banning TikTok almost five years ago. Already, Trump and others say that preventing Americans from accessing the app would violate the free speech of tens of thousands of people.
“The government is trying to shut down US users from speaking and communicating TikTok “Extraordinary and unprecedented,” said Patrick Toomey, director of civil liberties at the National Security Project.
The US Supreme Court is hearing plans to over-sell or ban TikTok
The US Supreme Court will hear word of mouth arguments on TikTok on Friday. It’s the latest battle in a long battle over whether to block the most popular social media app in the US – and it will force justices to weigh the importance of national security with freedom of speech.
TikTok and its parent company, Chinese-based ByteDance, asked the Supreme Court to review the case later. The lower court ruled last month to protect the law in the US to move the app. That ban will take effect on January 19 unless ByteDance sells TikTok assets to a non-Chinese company. While ByteDance has the option to divest, it stated in a legal filing that a divestment is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
Oral arguments are expected for the last two hours, during which each side will be allotted time to state their case. In filingThe court wrote that both sides were prepared to argue whether the ban violated the First Amendment.
We’ll bring you all the latest from the hearing, starting at 10am ET.