Supreme Court to reconsider TikTok ban

The Supreme Court is to decide the constitutionality of a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the US in January if the social-media app doesn’t shed its Chinese ownership.

The TikTok logo on the social media app company offices in Culver City, California. Picture: AFP.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would decide the constitutionality of a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the U.S. if the social-media app doesn’t shed its Chinese ownership.

With the ban set to take effect January 19, the court scheduled fast-track oral arguments for Jan. 10 on whether the law violates the First Amendment.

The justices’ move comes two days after TikTok and a group of content creators sought their intervention.

Congress enacted the ban earlier this year, with bipartisan support, in response to concerns that TikTok was a threat to national security. Politicians received classified briefings in which intelligence officials warned that China could use the app – one of the most widely used social-media apps and a popular news source – to spread Chinese propaganda and surveil Americans.

An appeals court in Washington upheld the law earlier this month. The ban prohibits mobile app stores, such as Google’s and Apple’s, from letting users download or update TikTok, and bars internet hosting services from supporting the app. The law doesn’t make it illegal to use TikTok, but the ban could quickly make the app inoperable.

The app’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, has said it can’t and won’t sell its U.S. business.

The U.S. government says TikTok’s divestiture from Chinese ownership is the only sure way of preventing China from using TikTok to wage information warfare and spy on Americans.

TikTok says the U.S. doesn’t have evidence that China intends to exploit the app for malign purposes and argues that Washington is targeting the app because it doesn’t like what users are posting and what content TikTok is recommending.

The platform, which has operated as TikTok in the U.S. since 2018, says it has 170 million U.S. users.

The Supreme Court will be deciding the high-stakes case on a compressed timeline that is far different from how it normally operates. Litigants typically spend months on legal briefs and other preparations, and the justices can then spend months crafting a decision. Here, the parties’ lawyers will have to scramble during the holidays; the court ordered that all written briefing be completed by Jan. 3.

Dow Jones