Live Updates: Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned
"The decision came a week after the justices heard a First Amendment challenge to a law aimed at the wildly popular short-form video platform used by 170 million Americans that the government fears could be influenced by China.
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The Supreme Court ruled against TikTok on Friday, rejecting the social media company’s First Amendment challenge to the law that effectively bans it in the United States starting on Sunday.
The unanimous decision may deal a death blow to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which serves up short-form videos that are a leading source of information and entertainment to tens of millions of Americans, especially younger ones.
Free speech advocates slammed the decision. The American Civil Liberties Union said that the ruling allows “the government to shut down an entire platform and the free speech rights of so many based on fear-mongering and speculation.” It urged President Biden and President Donald J. Trump to grant TikTok an extension under the law that requires divestment talks, or to ask the Justice Department not to enforce it.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, criticized the ruling in a statement on Bluesky: “TikTok’s future will turn on politics, not on today’s ruling, but by upholding the ban, the Court has markedly expanded the government’s power to censor in the name of national security. Its implications for TikTok may be limited, but the ruling creates a lot of space for other repressive policies.”
The government had also submitted some kind of classified evidence to the Supreme Court. The justices wrote in a footnote that their holding and analysis was based on the public record and that they had made no reference to that evidence.
Justice Gorsuch also highlighted that decision in his concurrence, saying he was pleased that the court had declined to consider it. Remarking that “efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns” since the other side needs an opportunity to contest it, he suggested that Congress or a judicial committee that comes up with rules and procedures might want to consider coming up with a system to deal with this kind of issue.
The app stores and cloud providers have a strong incentive to comply with the ban on TikTok. Under the law, those companies would pay penalties as high as $5,000 per user who is able to access the app inside the United States if the ban takes effect. TikTok says it has 170 million monthly U.S. users.
When Savannah Kalata, a high school senior, wakes up in the morning, the first thing she does is turn off her alarm. The second thing she does is open TikTok.
“It’s just like this quick fix,” said Ms. Kalata, 18, who lives in Minnesota. “I can’t take my eyes off it.”
For five years now, American officials have insisted that TikTok poses a grave national security threat — even if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, lay out the evidence.
But as the case came before the Supreme Court last Friday, pitting the government’s powers to protect the country against perceived threats against users who claim their First Amendment rights would be impinged by an effective ban on the app in the country, the environment of cyberthreats had changed dramatically.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says in a statement that President Biden’s position that TikTok should be available to Americans, but under ownership that mitigates the national security concerns, has “been clear for months.” She says that “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.”
On TikTok, some users are livestreaming the court’s decision for thousands of viewers, unpacking the ruling that could potentially impact their livelihoods. There is a sense of frustration and sadness from many those watching. “Is everybody on RedNote?” one livestreamer asked his followers, referencing a Chinese-owned video app that has become popular in recent days in light of the looming ban.
Everybody might be on RedNote. Looking for an alternative to TikTok this week, hundreds of thousands of people in the United States have gotten onto Xiaohongshu, also called RedNote, one of China’s most popular social media apps. Xiaohongshu was little known outside of China until this week, and has been the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple store since Tuesday.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said in a post this morning on Truth Social, his social media platform, that he had spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about a number of topics, including TikTok. Trump has signaled he would like to keep it operating in the United States.
The government offered two main justifications for the law: preventing China from covertly manipulating content on the platform, and preventing China from collecting vast amounts of data about the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. The court’s opinion rests on the data collection rationale, which it stresses is a “content neutral” justification.
The importance of the court finding that the data collection rationale is sufficient to uphold the law is that content-neutral restrictions on speech get an easier First Amendment test than restrictions aimed at particular content. Under that test, if restrictions advance an important governmental interest and don’t burden speech more than necessary, the court will uphold them — as it did here.
The ruling was a “per curiam,” meaning it was on behalf of the court as a whole and does not have an identified author. Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion that agreed with the result and most of the analysis, but objected to a section about the First Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch also filed a concurring opinion that made some additional observations.
TikTok faces a U.S. ban as soon as Sunday, a move that could have sweeping consequences for the social media landscape, popular culture, and millions of influencers and small businesses that rely on the platform to earn a living.
Here’s what you need to know.
The Supreme Court has upheld a law that effectively bans TikTok in the United States unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells the company.
The decision comes mere days after the Supreme Court seemed inclined to uphold the law effectively banning TikTok, even though several justices expressed concerns that the law was in tension with the First Amendment,
During arguments on Friday a majority of the justices appeared satisfied that the law was aimed not at TikTok’s speech rights but rather at its ownership, which the government says is controlled by China.
The Supreme Court ruled against TikTok on Friday rejecting the company’s First Amendment challenge to a law that effectively bans it starting on Sunday.
The unanimous decision may deal a death blow to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which serves up short-form videos that are a leading source of information and entertainment to 170 million Americans, especially younger ones."
