The Supreme Court of the United States has upheld a federal law that will ban TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., initiates a sale by this Sunday, January 19, The Associated Press reports. The court unanimously approved the law, ruling that the apparent risk to national security outweighed concerns regarding First Amendment rights. While the ban is not expected to mandate removal of the app from phones, experts say new downloads and updates will likely be blocked, eventually rendering it unusable. The restrictions may be paused if ByteDance finds a buyer by Sunday, but no such sale appears to be imminent, according to The AP.
The court made its decision in spite of opposition from party leaders wary of alienating its 170 million American users. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law after it overwhelmingly passed Congress, but has said he would not enforce it on Sunday; and President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has nearly 15 million followers on the app, has said he wants to resolve the issue.
The prospective ban went to the Supreme Court after TikTok sued the U.S. government, in 2024, calling it an “extraordinary intrusion on free speech rights.” The court countered, in its unsigned opinion, “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.”
