A federal appeals court ruled Friday to uphold a law that will force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the platform or have it banned in the U.S.
A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled unanimously that the law forcing ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a U.S. ban is legal, clearing the way for the law to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025. In their ruling, the judges characterized TikTok as a national security risk because the Chinese government is able to manipulate the app to its advantage and stated that the April divest-or-ban law does not run afoul of the First Amendment, as some of the law’s critics have contended.
“In this case, a foreign government threatens to distort free speech on an important medium of communication. Using its hybrid commercial strategy, the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] has positioned itself to manipulate public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends,” the judges wrote in their ruling. “The PRC’s ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals. Indeed, the First Amendment precludes a domestic government from exercising comparable control over a social media company in the United States.” (RELATED: Senate Intel Committee Demands Biden Admin Probe TikTok For Reportedly Letting China Access Data)
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“Here the Congress, as the Executive proposed, acted to end the PRC’s ability to control TikTok,” the judges wrote. “Understood in that way, the Act actually vindicates the values that undergird the First Amendment.”
TikTok has consistently denied that it is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but a former senior employee for ByteDance has alleged that CCP members inside the company have “superuser” abilities and a “backdoor channel” to access Americans’ data, while the app often promotes content that is in line with the CCP’s agenda, according to a recent study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University.
TikTok has also been accused of gathering data about Americans’ political views and illegally collecting children’s data. The company sued to try to block the divest-or-ban law from coming into effect, and Chinese embassy officials reportedly lobbied directly against the law on Capitol Hill as it was making its way through the legislature in April.
“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the U.S. and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”
President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he supports TikTok, though it is unclear what he may be able to do to roll back the law that is poised to take effect next month, according to The New York Times.
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