The Supreme Court decides to uphold the TikTok ban, setting the stage for a shutdown

The Supreme Court has upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban on the popular social video app in the US

ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many US users could lose access to the app this weekend. The app may still work for those who already have TikTok on their phones, although ByteDance has also threatened to shut down the app.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration and upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in April.

“There is no doubt that for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a significant and expansive outlet for expression, engagement and source of community,” the Supreme Court’s opinion reads. “However, Congress has determined that the divestment is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch have written a concurrence.

The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign opposition control, along with the vast amounts of sensitive data that the platform collects” constitute a national security problem.

Under the terms of the law, third-party ISPs may suffer Apple and Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the January 19 deadline.

If ISPs and app store owners comply, they will remove TikTok from their respective app stores, preventing users from downloading TikTok or installing the necessary updates that make the app functional.

TikTok’s fate in the United States is now in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, as of December asked Supreme Court to pause the law’s implementation and give his administration “an opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the issues at issue in the case.”

Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, a day after the TikTok deadline for a sale. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is one of several tech leaders expected to be in attendance, sitting at the podium.

In December, members of the Chinese Communist Party’s House Select Committee sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai urging the executives to begin preparing to comply with the law and reminding them of their duties as app store operators . .

Last Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers representing TikTok, content creators and the US government. TikTok’s lead attorney, Noel Francisco, argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the app’s 170 million US users. Meanwhile, US attorney Elizabeth Prelogar countered that the app’s alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China via its parent company ByteDance pose a national security threat.

After the oral arguments ended, several legal experts said the country’s highest court appeared to be more favorable to the US government’s case involving TikTok’s alleged dubious ties to the Chinese government.

Many TikTok creators have asked their fans to find them on competing social platforms like Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, CNBC reported. In addition, Instagram executives scheduled meetings after last Friday’s Supreme Court hearing to ask workers to prepare for a surge of users if the court upholds the law, the CNBC report said.

Chinese social media app and TikTok-like RedNote rose to the top of Apple’s app store on Monday, indicating that TikTok’s millions of users were looking for alternatives.

The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations as part of several options to keep the app from its effective U.S. ban, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. The plan was one of several the Chinese government was considering as part of larger discussions involving cooperation with the incoming Trump White House, the report said.

CLOCK: SCOTUS hears TikTok ban case.