Washington The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Friday over whether to reject a bill that would likely outlaw the social networking app TikTok in the US.
Attorneys for TikTok, some of its users, and the Biden administration are presenting oral arguments to the court’s nine justices, which has a conservative majority. A preliminary ruling is anticipated in the next days or hours.
Enacted with widespread bipartisan support, the law mandates that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, which is based in China, sell out its stake in the company by January 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The platform that millions of Americans utilize would be prohibited if no sale occurred.
TikTok and a few of its users filed a lawsuit to have the measure blocked, claiming it infringed upon their First Amendment rights to free speech.
Because of worries that the Chinese government would have control over the platform, the court is evaluating those arguments against the government’s justification of the statute on the basis of national security.
The court might swiftly issue an order stating whether it will temporarily halt the bill before rendering a definitive decision on the free expression issue, which would add even more complexity.
During oral arguments, Noel Francisco, an attorney for TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, contended that if the Chinese government forced Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and the owner of The Washington Post to promote Chinese policy, then forcing TikTok to divest would be equivalent to closing The Post. In addition, he denied that China directly controls TikTok’s source code because it is based in the United States and said that a divestment would make it impossible for the company to continue operating.
“There’s a global team of engineers, some in China, some in Europe, and some in the United States that update and maintain the source code,” Francisco explained. “A qualified divestiture would prohibit any kind of coordination with that global team of engineers.”
Francisco said that the TikTok algorithm was the content of the regulation, which he claimed was a content-based speech restriction. Regardless of how long it takes or how possible it is to divest, Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether TikTok’s First Amendment rights are implicated by the forced divestiture because the company can continue to utilize an algorithm.
“Look, if the government is doing something specifically for the purpose of changing the content that people see, that has to be subject to strict scrutiny,” Sotomayor replied. That was your stronger case, or at least the one that most intrigued me. In contrast to ByteDance, I don’t think that will have an impact on TikTok.
Francisco responded that TikTok is essentially unprecedented when asked to cite examples of business structure regulations being seen as direct regulations of express conduct. According to him, the regulation is not justified by the threat TikTok poses to national security.
“I’m not aware of any time in American history where the Congress has tried to shut down a major speech platform,” Francisco stated. Francisco stated that “it will go dark” on January 19 if TikTok loses the case. An interim injunction, he said, might “buy everybody a little breathing space.”
According to Jeffrey Fisher, the lawyer for TikTok content creator Brian Firebaugh, the statute obstructed his client’s First Amendment expression rights because creators are entitled to collaborate with the publisher of their choosing.
According to Chief Justice John Roberts, “Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok,” “The cure demonstrates that they don’t give a damn about the expression. They’re not advocating for TikTok to shut down. China must relinquish its influence over TikTok, they believe.
According to Fisher, his client and other “ordinary American citizens” may create sizable platforms and make their voices known thanks to TikTok’s distinctive algorithmic architecture. According to Fisher, other social networking sites have not been able to replicate the atmosphere that TikTok provides, which would disadvantage TikTok creators in the event that the app stopped working and they lost their biggest followings.
The political history of the case is complex and tense.
Despite the fact that the ban was signed into law by President Joe Biden and passed by Congress with bipartisan support, Trump has changed his mind on the matter. He promised to outlaw TikTok during his first term in office, but he later declared his support for the app during the election campaign, pointing to his own popularity on the app. He recently met the CEO of the company.
In order to pursue a political settlement of the conflict when he takes office, Trump filed an unprecedented brief with the Supreme Court, requesting that the justices temporarily stop the statute.
The statute contains a clause that permits the president to provide a one-time extension of ninety days in the event that he finds a way to divest and that there has been substantial progress in carrying it out. No indications have been made to the public that such a sale is likely. A group led by billionaire Frank McCourt said on Thursday that it was making an offer.
TikTok, eight individual users, and the conservative TikTok group Based Politics Inc. all filed separate challenges, claiming the law infringes on their right to free speech.
Despite concluding that the law did implicate the First Amendment and required a thorough analysis, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed it.
The three-judge panel came to the conclusion that the law was carefully tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.
The government’s national security arguments, such as worries that the Chinese government would obtain user data on Americans and perhaps alter app content, were upheld by the appeals court.
In legal documents submitted to the Supreme legal, TikTok’s attorneys contended that although Congress has a legitimate interest in preserving national security, stifling American speech is not one of the options available since other Americans might be convinced. They stated that the government made no effort to address its national security issues in a way that would not infringe upon the right to free speech.
A diverse range of public interest organizations, including the libertarian Cato Institute and the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union, have entered the battle on TikTok’s behalf in the court on the basis of free speech.
Just days before her departure, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is tasked with upholding the law.
She claimed in court documents that the law does not even violate the First Amendment and that the proposed ban would address the significant national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s control over TikTok, a platform that collects private information about tens of millions of Americans and would be a powerful instrument for a foreign adversary to use for covert influence operations.
She said that rather than restricting speech, the legislation keeps an enemy from another country from doing so.
“The restrictions are not focused on suppressing specific speech based on what is being said or who is saying it,” Prelogar said, so even if there are free speech problems, they are small.
“Americans are on this platform thinking that they are speaking to one another, and this recommendation engine that is apparently so valuable is organically directing their speech to each other,” Prelogar said the court in a Friday statement. Furthermore, the PRC, a foreign adversarial country, is secretly taking advantage of a system of vulnerabilities.
In her response, Justice Elena Kagan said that “everybody now knows that China is behind it” and contrasted TikTok’s algorithm with other social media sites like X, which have made more disclosures.
Prelogar told the justices that ByteDance might be forced to provide China’s authorities access to the data that TikTok collects about its users and uses to track the whereabouts of Forbes journalists.
In 2018, Meta admitted to granting Chinese developers access to user data.
Montana and 21 other states, together with retired national security officials, support the federal government.
Since its 2018 introduction in the US, TikTok has grown in popularity, with 170 million users as of right now.
Users receive streams of short-form video content from the algorithm, which adapts to their interests.