US Supreme Court okays TikTok shutdown

US President-elect Donald Trump and his allies are trying to find a political path forward to assuage security concerns and rescue the app.

TikTok could go dark – at least temporarily – in the US on Sunday. Picture: AFP

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell or shut down the social-media app by January 19, siding with Congress’s national-security concerns over the platform and its users’ claim that the ban violates the First Amendment.

The ruling on Friday means the platform could go dark – at least temporarily – on Sunday, depriving millions of teenagers and other TikTok users of their daily fix of short-form videos that keep them glued to their phones.

President-elect Donald Trump and his allies are trying to find a political path forward to assuage security concerns and rescue the app. Biden administration officials have signalled they don’t intend to enforce the ban before leaving office, but that hasn’t been enough to give TikTok comfort.

If it lost at the Supreme Court, TikTok has been planning to shut down the app in the US to comply with the law and avoid exposing companies that sell or distribute the app to legal liability. It has also been exploring other manoeuvres and courting Trump.

The ruling set off a new last-minute round of scrambling. The White House made clear it intended to take no action when the law takes effect Sunday, given Trump’s inauguration the next day. “This administration recognises that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next administration,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

The Justice Department said it welcomed the decision but offered no specifics on what happens now. “The next phase of this effort – implementing and ensuring compliance with the law after it goes into effect on January 19 – will be a process that plays out over time,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said.

Trump in a social-media post said, “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

The President-elect said he spoke on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and discussed an array of topics, including TikTok.

TikTok had no immediate comment. Its CEO, Shou Chew, is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration.

The court, in an unsigned 20-page opinion, acknowledged that, “for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

Lawmakers’ fear that China could access Americans’ personal data and weaponise it to weaken the US. was ample justification for the law, the court said.

With the deadline approaching, the court acted with unusual speed, holding a special day of arguments on January 10, weeks after a federal appeals court upheld the TikTok ban. The Supreme Court was the last stop for TikTok, a subsidiary of Beijing-based ByteDance, and a group of Americans who use the app and say no comparable platform currently is available to them.

Noting the time constraints, the court stressed its decision was narrowly focused on the TikTok law rather than expressing a broad free-speech standard for the internet. Citing Justice Felix Frankfurter’s caution in a 1944 case involving then-new technologies like radio and aeroplanes, “we should take care not to ‘embarrass the future,’” the opinion said.

The bipartisan bill President Biden signed last April classifies the app, which serves up short videos to some 170 million American users each month, as the tool of a foreign adversary that poses a grave threat to national security. Justice Department lawyers argued that the platform poses two distinct dangers: It collects a trove of personal data on tens of millions of Americans that will remain at the disposal of Chinese intelligence for decades to come, and it allows Beijing to undermine U.S. democracy by manipulating the information Americans see.

Although ByteDance is a private company, the Justice Department says that it effectively is an arm of China’s Communist government, which closely supervises business entities and requires their co-operation with security services.

Lawyers for TikTok and its users argued that the government was abridging free-speech rights based on speculation, and that any risks the app might pose could be addressed through less restrictive means. More detailed consumer disclosures about the app’s ownership and legal penalties for transferring user data to China were options that Congress failed to explore, TikTok advocates argued.

Celebrities, fashion trends, video games and other light fare predominate among TikTok topics, but the app increasingly is a source of news, research shows, particularly for younger Americans. According to the Pew Research Center, 45% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 regularly get news on TikTok, while 4% of those 65 and older do.

TikTok’s hopes rested with a line of Supreme Court cases that have guarded First Amendment rights in the internet age. Justices across the ideological spectrum have rejected claims that the endless frontier of cyberspace requires more restrictive approaches to free speech than sufficed when mass media meant handbills, printing presses and broadcast towers.

But the same Supreme Court has deferred to the government when it comes to national security and foreign policy, declaring that judges lack the capacity and constitutional authority to second-guess executive determinations involving defence of the U.S. and its interests from overseas threats.

The Wall Street Journal