Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban in the US

It is unclear what options are open to Trump once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed for a 90-day break in restrictions on the app if progress had been made toward a sale before it took effect. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it is uncertain whether the prospect of a sale once the law takes effect could trigger a 90-day respite for TikTok.

“Congress has determined that divestment is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, adding that the law “does not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch filed brief separate opinions, noting some reservations about the court’s decision, but upheld the result.

“Undoubtedly, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was convinced by the argument that China could access “vast swaths of personal information about tens of thousands of Americans.”

Some digital rights groups criticized the court’s ruling shortly after it was released.

“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 of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which has backed TikTok’s challenge to the federal law.

Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the effect on their business if TikTok shuts down. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen over the next few weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner mechanic shop in Conyers, Georgia. “And very afraid of the decline I will have in reaching customers and worried that I will potentially lose my business over the next six months.”

At arguments, the justices were told by a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese technology company that is its parent, how difficult it would be to complete a deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that made it social media platform wildly successful.

The app allows users to view hundreds of videos in about half an hour because some are only a few seconds long, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky, which complained that TikTok is designed to be addictive and harm children’s mental health. Similar cases were filed by more than a dozen states. TikTok has called the claims inaccurate.

The dispute over TikTok’s ties to China has come to embody the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.

“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before Sunday’s deadline,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to allow its sale reveals precisely what TikTok is. : a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda as legal arguments.”

The US has said it is concerned that TikTok is collecting vast amounts of user data, including sensitive information about viewing habitsthat may fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned that the algorithm that fuels 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 hard to detect.

TikTok points out that the United States has not provided evidence that China has tried to manipulate content on its American platform or collect American user data through TikTok.

Bipartisan majorities in Congress passed the legislation, and Biden signed it into law in April. The law was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over TikTok, as the government perceived as a threat to national security.

TikTok, which sued the government last year over the law, has long denied it could be used as a tool of Beijing. A three-judge panel consisting of two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee unanimously upheld the law in December, prompting TikTok’s swift appeal to the Supreme Court.

Without a sale to an approved buyer, the law prevents app stores run by Apple, Google and others from offering TikTok starting Sunday. Internet hosting services will also be prohibited from hosting TikTok.

ByteDance has said it will not sell. But some investors have seen it, including the Trumps former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt. McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative has said it and its unnamed partners have presented a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s US assets. The consortium, which includes “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, did not disclose the financial terms of the offer.

McCourt said in a statement after the ruling that his group was “ready to work with the company and President Trump to complete a deal.”

Prelogar told the judges last week that having the law go into effect “could be quite a shock” to ByteDance needing to reconsider its position.

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Associated Press writers Haleluya Hadero, Mae Anderson and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Hadero reported from South Bend, Indiana, and Anderson from New York.

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