A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law banning TikTok nationwide unless the viral video app was sold off by its China-based parent company, rejecting TikTok's claim that the crackdown violates the free speech rights of millions of Americans.
In its ruling, the court said that it was "precisely" because of TikTok's "expansive reach" that both Congress and the president determined that divesting it from China's control "is essential to protect our national security."
In its opinion, the court wrote that TikTok's ownership by a China-based company, ByeDance, represents a national security threat that surpasses the free speech concerns TikTok raised.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. 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," the court wrote.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, delivered the Biden administration a significant victory, but sets TikTok on an uncertain path.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to save TikTok. What that means, however, could take on several different forms.
Under the law, TikTok has until Jan. 19 to be sold off from its Beijing-based owner ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. That deadline may be extended by 90 days if there is "significant progress" toward a sale. So one option could be that the enactment date is forestalled and Trump tries to broker a deal for the app to be acquired by an American company or group of investors.
Trump can also declare that steps TikTok has taken to distance itself from ByteDance, including a plan known as Project Texas that walls off Americans' data from China, qualifies as divestiture.
Trump may also instruct his attorney general to not enforce the law.
Banning TikTok is not as simple as flipping an "off" switch. The law targets app stores controlled by Apple and Google, forcing the tech giants to remove TikTok. And makes it illegal for web-hosting companies to support TikTok.
But even if the law was being enforced by a presidential administration, TikTok would slowly wither on the vine. Its 170 million American users would not see the app disappear from devices. Instead, software updates would stop being fed to the app. Over time, TikTok would become slow, glitchy and eventually unusable.
Trump, who during his first administration tried to put TikTok out of business, reversed his position on the campaign trail, citing in one social media post that a TikTok ban would only boost the business of Meta, which he has criticized for his unproven belief that the social media company hurt him in the 2020 presidential election.
A drawn-out appeals process could come next. Either party can ask for the D.C. appeals court to re-examine the case. From there, the Supreme Court can also be asked to review it.
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