A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the US.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok and ByteDance – another plaintiff in the lawsuit – are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement: “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue.
“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”
Mr Hughes argued that, unless stopped, the statute “will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th 2025″.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The US has said it is concerned about TikTok collecting vast amounts of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion.
Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans.
