Supreme Court rules on TikTok
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law that would require TikTok to be sold by its Chinese parent company or face a U.S. ban starting Sunday, citing national-security concerns over speech and access. The decision makes TikTok’s future in the U.S. contingent on a sale rather than leaving the app’s operation unchanged. (tucson.com)
The Supreme Court cleared the way for TikTok to be banned in the United States unless ByteDance sells it, ruling 9-0 on January 17, 2025. (supremecourt.gov) The unsigned opinion said the law takes effect on January 19, 2025, and bars United States companies from distributing, maintaining, or updating TikTok unless its United States operations are severed from Chinese control. The case was argued on January 10, 2025, just one week before the ruling. (supremecourt.gov) The justices said the case was about the First Amendment, not whether TikTok is popular. They wrote that Congress had compiled a record supporting national-security concerns about TikTok’s data collection and its ties to ByteDance, a company with operations in China. (supremecourt.gov) That turns the fight over TikTok into a fight over ownership. The app had more than 170 million users in the United States, and the court said Congress chose divestiture rather than leaving the platform under Chinese control. (supremecourt.gov; scotusblog.com) Congress set this up in April 2024, when lawmakers folded the TikTok measure into a foreign-aid package that President Joe Biden signed on April 24, 2024. The House backed the TikTok language 360-58, and the Senate passed the broader package 79-18. (congress.gov; usatoday.com) TikTok and a group of users argued that the law effectively shut down a major speech platform and violated the First Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union backed that argument in court and said the law threatened the speech rights of more than 170 million Americans who use the app. (supremecourt.gov; aclu.org) The Justice Department took the opposite view and said the law targeted foreign control, not ideas or viewpoints. After the ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the decision let the department keep working to prevent the Chinese government from using TikTok to undermine national security. (justice.gov) The court did not say TikTok’s content was unlawful or that Congress can ban any social platform it dislikes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately that she would analyze the law under First Amendment scrutiny but still uphold it, and Justice Neil Gorsuch also wrote separately to say the record justified caution about foreign control. (scotusblog.com; law.cornell.edu) The immediate effect was simple: TikTok’s future in the United States no longer depended on the courts. It depended on whether ByteDance could sell, and whether the government would enforce the law once the January 19 deadline arrived. (supremecourt.gov; reuters.com)
