The Supreme Court has upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban of the popular social video app in the U.S.
ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many U.S. 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 the app down.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which President Joe Biden signed in April.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the Supreme Court’s opinion said. “But Congress has determined that divestiture 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 concurrences.
The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern.
Under the terms of the law, third-party internet service providers like Apple and Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the Jan. 19 deadline.
If internet service providers 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.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated President Biden’s support for the law in a statement, saying “TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law.”
“Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday,” Pierre said.
Kate Ruane, the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology non-profit criticized the Supreme Court’s decision, saying in a statement that it “harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world.”
“Individuals use the app to create, to share information, to get their news, to comment on current issues and promote their businesses – that’s precisely the kind of expression the First Amendment is intended to protect,” Ruane said.
TikTok’s fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who in December asked the Supreme Court to pause the law’s implementation and allow his administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”
Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, one day after the TikTok deadline for a sale. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is one of several tech leaders expected to be in attendance, seated on the dais.
In December, members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai in which they urged the executives to begin preparing to comply with the law and reminded them of their duties as app store operators.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers representing TikTok, content creators and the U.S. government. TikTok’s lead lawyer, Noel Francisco, argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the app’s 170 million American users. Meanwhile, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar countered that the app’s alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China via its parent ByteDance poses a national security threat.
After the oral arguments concluded, multiple legal experts believed that the nation’s highest court appeared to be more favorable to the U.S. government’s case involving TikTok’s alleged questionable ties to the Chinese government.
Many TikTok creators have been telling their fans to find them on competing social platforms like Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, CNBC reported. Additionally, Instagram leaders scheduled meetings after last Friday’s Supreme Court hearing to direct workers to prepare for a wave of users if the court upholds the law, the CNBC report said.
Chinese social media app and TikTok-lookalike RedNote rose to the top of Apple’s app store on Monday, indicating that TikTok’s millions of users were seeking 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 intended to keep the app from its effective ban in the U.S., Bloomberg News reported on Monday. The plan was one of several that the Chinese government was considering as part of larger discussions involving working with the upcoming Trump White House, the report said.
WATCH: SCOTUS hears TikTok ban case.
