WASHINGTON — Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal ban TikTok starting Sunday unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, maintaining that the national security risk from ties to China allays concerns about the app’s speech restriction or its 170 million users in the United States.
A sale doesn’t seem imminent, and while experts say the app won’t disappear from existing users’ phones once the law goes into effect, recent users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. The Department of Justice said in a lawsuit that the app would eventually stop working.
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The decision was made against the backdrop of extraordinary political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to be able to negotiate a solution, and President Joe Biden’s administration, which has signaled it will not enforce the law – which was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support – starting Sunday, his last full day in office.
“TikTok should remain available to Americans, but only under U.S. ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in crafting this law,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement, noting that the action to The task of implementing the law will fall to the recent administration.
Trump, given TikTok’s popularity and 14.7 million followers on the app, finds himself on the opposite side of the argument of prominent Senate Republicans who accuse TikTok’s Chinese owner of failing to find a buyer sooner. Trump said in a Truth Social post shortly before the decision that TikTok was one of the topics during a Friday conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who is scheduled to attend Trump’s inauguration, used the app to thank the recent president for “his commitment to working with us to keep TikTok accessible.”
It is unclear what options Trump, a Republican, will have once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed a 90-day pause on app restrictions if progress was made toward sales before it went into effect. Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told justices last week that it was unclear whether the prospect of a sale after the law’s passage could create a 90-day respite for TikTok.
The decision examined the intersection of the First Amendment and national security concerns in the rapidly changing social media sphere, and the justices acknowledged in their opinion that navigating the recent terrain was tough given relatively little knowledge about it.
“Congress has determined that divestment is necessary to address its legitimate national security concerns about TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, adding that the bill “does not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.” “
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch filed brief dissenting opinions in which they expressed some reservations about the court’s decision but agreed with its outcome.
“Without question, the remedy that Congress and the President have chosen here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was convinced by the argument that China could gain access to “extensive troves of personal data on tens of millions of Americans.”
Some digital rights groups sharply criticized the court’s ruling soon after it was issued.
“Today’s unprecedented decision to uphold the TikTok ban harms the free speech of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world,” said Kate Ruane, director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, which is supporting TikTok’s challenge to the federal law.
Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the impact TikTok’s shutdown would have on their businesses. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner Machine Shop in Conyers, Georgia. “I’m very worried about having less exposure to customers, and I’m worried about potentially losing my business in the next six months.”
During the argument, a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., its Chinese parent technology company, told judges how difficult it would be to complete the deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that made the social media platform a huge success.
The app allows users to watch hundreds of videos in about half an hour, since some last only a few seconds, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky that alleges that TikTok was designed to be addictive and harm children’s mental health. Similar lawsuits have been filed by more than a dozen states. TikTok called these claims false.
The dispute over TikTok’s ties with China has become the embodiment of geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.
“ByteDance and its Chinese communist overlords had nine months to sell TikTok before Sunday’s deadline,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. on X. “The very fact that communist China does not allow its sale shows exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court rightly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments.”
The United States has expressed concern that TikTok collects huge amounts of user data, including: sensitive information about your viewing habitsthat could fall under duress into the hands of the Chinese government. Officials also warned that the algorithm that generates what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who could use it to shape content on the platform in ways that are difficult to detect.
TikTok notes that the United States has not provided evidence that China has tried to manipulate content on its U.S. platform or collect data from American users through TikTok.
Biden signed the bill into law in April. The Order was the culmination a long-running saga in Washington over TikTok, which the government sees it as a threat to national security.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law last year, has long denied it could be used as a tool by Beijing. A three-judge panel, made up of two Republican nominees and one Democratic nominee, unanimously upheld the law in December, prompting TikTok’s quick appeal to the Supreme Court.
Absent a sale to an approved buyer, the law prohibits app stores operated by Apple, Google and other companies from offering TikTok starting Sunday. Online hosting services will also not be able to host TikTok.
ByteDance said it would not sell. But some investors, including Trump, are watching former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt. McCourt Project Liberty said it and its unnamed partners presented a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s US assets. The consortium, which includes “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, did not disclose financial terms of the offer.
McCourt, in a statement released after the ruling, said his group was “ready to work with the company and President Trump to finalize the agreement.”
Last week, Prelogar told judges that the law’s entry into force “could be a shock” and ByteDance must reconsider its position.
