TikTok made a last-ditch effort on Monday to continue operating in the United States, asking the Supreme Court to temporarily block a law intended to force ByteDance, its China-based parent company, to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban.
TikTok and ByteDance submitted an urgent request to the justices seeking an injunction to stop the impending ban on the social media platform utilized by approximately 170 million Americans while they challenged a lower court’s decision that supported the law. Additionally, a collective of U.S. users of the app also filed a comparable request on Monday.
The law was enacted by Congress in April due to worries about national security. According to the Justice Department, TikTok represents “a national-security risk of significant magnitude and scope” as a Chinese-owned firm, due to its access to extensive data on American users, ranging from their locations to private messages, as well as its capacity to covertly influence the content that users see on the platform.
On December 6, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, based in Washington, dismissed claims from certain companies and TikTok users that the law infringes on their free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Organizations that advocate for free speech, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned the ruling made by the D.C. Circuit.
On December 13, the DC Circuit rejected TikTok and ByteDance’s urgent plea to temporarily suspend the statute.
