A federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok within a few months, dealing a resounding defeat for the popular social media platform as it fights to stay in the United States.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law — which requires TikTok to cut ties with or be banned by its China-based parent company ByteDance by mid-January — and rejected the company’s challenge to the law. Which he claimed conflicts with the First Amendment.
“The First Amendment exists to protect freedom of expression in the United States,” the court’s opinion, written by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, said. “Here the government acted only to protect that freedom from a hostile foreign nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect data about people in the United States.”
TikTok and ByteDance – the other plaintiff in the lawsuit – are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, although it is unclear whether the court will hear the case.
“The Supreme Court has a well-established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free expression, and we expect they will do just that with respect to this important constitutional issue,” TikTok spokesman Michael Hughes said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was designed and imposed based on inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” Hughes said. He said that unless stopped, the law “will silence the voices of more than 170 million Americans here in the United States and around the world on January 19, 2025.”
Although the case is directly in the court system, it’s also possible that the two companies could get some kind of lifeline from President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term but said during the presidential campaign that he now does. Against such action.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short video sharing app, which the government considers a national security threat because of its ties to China.
“Today’s decision is an important step in preventing the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok to collect sensitive information about millions of Americans, secretly manipulate content provided to the American public, and undermine our national security,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. Friday.
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The United States said it was concerned about TikTok collecting broad swaths of user data, including sensitive information about viewing habits, which could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials also warned that the proprietary algorithm that feeds what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who could use it to shape content on the platform in a way that is difficult to detect — a concern the European Union reflected on Friday. It examines the role of the video-sharing app in the Romanian elections.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied that Beijing could use it to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its lawyers have carefully pointed out that the United States has not provided evidence proving that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the United States. They also argued that the law is based on future risks, which the Justice Department stressed in part referring to an unspecified action it claims the two companies took in the past due to Chinese government demands.
Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel, made up of two Republican judges and one Democratic-appointed judge, heard oral arguments in September.
In the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, the committee appeared to grapple with how foreign ownership of TikTok would affect its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to limit potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform. On Friday, the three rejected TikTok’s request.
In the court’s ruling, Ginsburg, a Republican appointee, rejected TikTok’s main legal arguments against the law, including that the law amounted to an unlawful collection or seizure of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. He also said the law does not violate the First Amendment because the government is not looking to “suppress content or require a particular mix of content” on TikTok.
“Content on the platform can in principle remain unchanged after divestiture, and people in the United States will remain free to read and share as much PRC propaganda (or other content) as they wish on TikTok or any other platform they choose.” Ginsburg wrote using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.
Justice Sri Srinivasan, the presiding judge, issued a concurring opinion.
TikTok’s lawsuit was combined with a second legal challenge filed by several creators — whose legal costs are covered by the company — as well as a third challenge filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc. And other organizations, including the Knight First Amendment Institute, also filed amicus briefs supporting TikTok.
“This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans’ access to information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Jamil Jaafar, the organization’s executive director. “We hope that the Court of Appeal ruling is not the final word.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers who pushed for the legislation celebrated the court’s ruling.
“I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate the U.S. takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app to America under new ownership,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the committee. House Select Committee on China.
“It’s time for ByteDance to accept the law,” said Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamurthy, who co-authored the law.
To allay concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to strengthen protections around US user data.
The company also said the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it presented to the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. She blamed the government for withdrawing from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Ministry says are insufficient.
Lawyers for both companies claimed that it was impossible to divest the platform commercially and technically. They also say that any sale of TikTok without the desired algorithm — the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divestment plan — would turn the American version of TikTok into an island separate from other global content.
However, some investors, including former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. The two men said earlier this year that they would launch a consortium to buy TikTok’s business in the United States.
This week, a spokesman for McCourt’s Project Freedom initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid had made informal capital commitments of more than $20 billion.
