Supreme court agrees to hear TikTok challenge to law ending its US operations
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Court will hear two hours of oral arguments on 10 January and consider the social media app’s challenge to the law. The US supreme court said on Wednesday that it would hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that could make the company’s popular video app disappear from the US.
In its order on Wednesday, the supreme court said it would set aside two hours for oral arguments on 10 January to consider TikTok’s lawsuit against the justice department and the attorney general, Merrick Garland. TikTok issued a statement in response to the court agreeing to take up its case: “We’re pleased with today’s supreme court order. We believe the court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights.”.
The law that will either ban TikTok or force the sale of the app is set to go into effect on 19 January. A federal appeals court in Washington DC rejected ByteDance’s argument earlier this month that the law violated the free speech provision of the US constitution’s first amendment. The ruling allows the law, passed in April, to remain in place.
The justice department argued that it considered TikTok “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” because of the vast amount of data it has compiled and stored on its users in the US. Members of Congress made similar arguments when debating the bill. They contended that, because ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing, national security laws there would allow the Chinese Communist party to manipulate US citizens with propaganda delivered via the app. So far, the US has produced no evidence that such manipulation has taken place, though US lawmakers have said the threat TikTok poses is severe enough to bar the app from the country.
