TikTok faces a significant deadline as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Friday denied its request to delay an impending ban. The popular short-video app must now swiftly appeal to the Supreme Court to block or overturn a law mandating its parent company, ByteDance, to divest TikTok by January 19.
The emergency motion, filed by TikTok and ByteDance on Monday, sought additional time to present their case to the Supreme Court. The companies warned that without judicial intervention, the law would effectively “shut down TikTok – one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms – for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”
The appeals court, however, dismissed the bid, stating that TikTok and ByteDance had not provided a precedent where a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has halted the Act while awaiting Supreme Court review. “TikTok and ByteDance have not identified such a case,” the court’s unanimous order said.
A TikTok spokesperson responded to the ruling, stating the company’s intention to bring the case before the Supreme Court, “which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.”
Under the current law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance completes the divestiture by January 19. The legislation also grants the U.S. government broad authority to prohibit other foreign-owned applications that may raise concerns over the collection of Americans’ data.
The U.S. Justice Department argues that “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security.” TikTok contends that the Justice Department has misrepresented its ties to China, emphasizing that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States on cloud servers operated by Oracle. Additionally, content moderation decisions affecting U.S. users are made domestically.
The upcoming decision places TikTok’s future in the hands of Democratic President Joe Biden, who must decide whether to grant a 90-day extension of the January 19 deadline to enforce a sale, and then of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who assumes office on January 20.
Trump, who previously attempted to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, stated before the November presidential election that he would not allow the ban on TikTok.
In a related development, the chair and top Democrat on a U.S. House of Representatives committee on China urged the CEOs of Alphabet, Google\’s parent company, and Apple to prepare to remove TikTok from their U.S. app stores by January 19.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
