Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban, Threatening Apps' Existence in U.S.: NPR

Callie Goodwin of Columbia, South Carolina, holds a sign in support of TikTok in front of the Supreme Court on January 10 in Washington, D.C. Goodwin, owner of a small business that sells personalized greeting cards, says 80% of her sales are from people who found her on TikTok. Jacquelyn Martin/AP .

rock the caption Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the federal government can legally shut down TikTok in the United States, dealing a major blow to the viral video app used by about half of Americans.

Last April, President Biden signed a bipartisan bill stating that TikTok must separate from its China-based parent company or close its operations in the United States.

TikTok challenged the ban in court, arguing that it violated the free speech rights of users and the company, an appeal it took all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard the case on January 10.

The High Court's ruling means that from January 19, tech giants Apple and Google will no longer be able to offer TikTok on their app stores. Web hosting providers must cut ties with the platform or face fines of $5,000 for each user who can still access the service, a penalty that can easily run into billions of dollars.

TikTok's seemingly incessant legal limbo has caused widespread confusion among users about when and whether the app will ever actually stop working. But now the nation's highest court has upheld the federal ban.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok provides a distinctive and expansive means of expression, a means of engagement, and a source of community. But Congress has determined that divestment is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and its relationship with a foreign adversary,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion. “We conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners' First Amendment rights.”

The judges acknowledged the tight time frame under which they were operating, emphasizing that the ruling should be seen as applying only to TikTok, not as a sweeping precedent. “This caution is heightened in these cases, given the accelerated time frame provided for our review. Our analysis should be understood as narrowly focused in light of these circumstances,” the justices wrote.

Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University who has closely followed the TikTok case, said the justices did frame the ruling as specific to TikTok, but it could have implications that go beyond ownership. of the company.

“There is a Bush v. Gore aspect to the decision in the sense that it is a one-off and is not intended to have any greater precedential value,” Chander said, referring to the landmark 2000 ruling. “But this will be a very important decision,” he said. “And that gives enormous power to Congress to act on data privacy issues.”

The ruling follows an emergency hearing last week in which judges were skeptical that the free speech rights of millions of US TikTok users should outweigh the risk to national security that China represents, according to Congress. Lawmakers fear the Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans or spread pro-China propaganda, even though TikTok skeptics have never shown concrete examples of that.

When Congress passed the law targeting TikTok in April, lawmakers provided the company with a way to avoid expulsion: divest entirely from China-based parent company ByteDance, which would address lawmakers' national security concerns and the intelligence community in Washington.

But for TikTok executives, it is only a symbolic life raft, since ByteDance has always indicated that the platform, the first global social media success in China, is not for sale. Additionally, China's export control laws prevent the sale of TikTok's algorithm unless regulators in Beijing approve the transaction, something Chinese experts have said the country is unlikely to do. .

The only justice to express concerns about the free speech implications of a ban was Neil Gorsuch, who called banning TikTok to eliminate the Chinese threat a “paternalistic view.”

“I mean, don’t we normally assume that the best cure for problematic speech is counter-speech?” Gorsuch said, adding that TikTok has discussed the possibility of including a disclaimer on its app indicating that some content might be secretly manipulated by China.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the federal government, quickly dismissed the idea with this analogy: “Imagine if you walked into a store and I had a sign saying that one of the 1 million products in this store causes cancer,” she told the court. . “This will not tell you which product is actually endangering your health.”

On Friday, following the Supreme Court's ruling, Biden's White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that it would be up to the new administration to implement the law. “Given the timing, this administration recognizes that actions to implement the law must simply fall to the next administration, which takes office on Monday,” she said.

All eyes are now on President-elect Donald Trump. He filed a brief with the Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments last week, asking the justices to delay their decision to give his administration time to abandon a “negotiated solution” that would resolve national security concerns.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term, has since reversed course and now wants to save the app. He publicly attributed his change of heart to his belief that TikTok had boosted youth participation in his favor in November. But others pointed to the timing of his about-face after Trump met with a billionaire hedge fund manager whose business group owns a major stake in ByteDance, TikTok's parent company.

The TikTok ban will begin on Sunday. The next day, Trump will be sworn in.

Once in the White House, Trump can direct his Justice Department not to enforce the ban. This would put Apple, Google and other companies that do business with TikTok in an awkward position, since these companies would technically be violating federal law.

Another scenario is that Trump could extend the effective date of the ban, even though it will have already started on January 19.

“As I understand it, we have closed our doors. It is possible that on January 20, 21 and 22 we will be in a different world,” TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco told the court last week, suggesting that maybe Trump could pause the ban.

Indeed, under the law, the president can delay the ban for a period of 90 days, but only in the event that progress has been made towards a sale out of ByteDance.

On Friday, Trump announced on his social media that he had not yet made a decision. “The Supreme Court's decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to take stock of the situation. Stay tuned!”

Prelogar, along with the federal government, told the court during oral arguments that if the ban goes into effect, it might just give the U.S. government enough leverage to convince ByteDance and Chinese regulators to allow the sale of TikTok to a company American or a group of American investors. .

“When push comes to shove and these restrictions come into effect, I think it will fundamentally change the landscape in terms of what ByteDance is willing to take into account, and it could be just the shock that Congress has been waiting for “that the company needs to move forward with the divestment process,” she said.

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