TikTok is filing an emergency to prevent the ban from taking effect

TikTok on Monday requested an emergency pause in a law to ban the popular social media app next month.

A temporary lifting of the measure will give the Supreme Court time to decide whether to review the law, the company said in a lawsuit.

The filing comes just days after TikTok — which boasts more than 170 million US users — lost a challenge to the measure in a federal appeals court.

A break in the law would give the Supreme Court time to decide whether it should “review this exceptionally important case,” TikTok said in the lawsuit Monday.

Attorneys for the Justice Department urged the federal court on Monday to reject TikTok’s request for a temporary injunction. The DOJ said it plans to file a formal motion opposing TikTok’s request as soon as Wednesday, but the government agency urged the court to reject TikTok’s request even before then.

“The Court is familiar with the relevant facts and law and has definitively rejected petitioners’ constitutional claims in a thorough decision that recognizes the critical national security interests underlying the law,” DOJ lawyers said.

The law would impose a nationwide ban on TikTok on January 19, 2025, unless the company finds another owner.

The ban would take effect a day before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has signaled that he will seek to overturn a possible ban.

The legal pause would also allow the Trump administration to decide its approach to TikTok, the company’s legal filing said.

TikTok had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that a potential ban would deny US users access to a popular venue for public expression. Lawyers for the company also disputed claims that the app poses a national security risk.

In a ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s bid to overturn the law.

The federal court found merit in security concerns about potential data collection or content manipulation by the Chinese government.

Each of those two concerns “constitutes an independent compelling national security interest,” the court’s opinion said. The court cited previous cases where the Chinese government had pursued data, noting the government’s use of relationships with Chinese-owned companies.

The China-based app has faced growing scrutiny from officials amid fears that user data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government and the app could become a weapon of China to spread misinformation. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has denied these claims.

There is little evidence that TikTok has shared US user data with the Chinese government or that the Chinese government has asked the app to do so, cybersecurity experts previously told ABC News.

In a statement on Monday, TikTok urged the Supreme Court to intervene on its behalf.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” the company said. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based on inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”

ABC News’ Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.