According to reports, the Supreme Court justices “sound likely” to uphold the TikTok ban, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 19.
President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the ban, which will begin one day before his inauguration unless it is sold to a new non-Chinese owner.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has indicated it is not open to a forced sale.
On Friday, the Supreme Court heard over two hours of arguments about whether banning the app would violate Americans’ freedom of speech.
The justices, including conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, seemed skeptical of the claims and said, “The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to (sell TikTok).”
“It doesn’t’ say, ‘TikTok, you can’t speak,’” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson added, according to a New York Daily News report.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to accept that the ban is an effort to prevent Chinese indoctrination of young Americans.
“That seems like a huge concern for the future of the country,” Kavanaugh said.
Trump’s nominee to be solicitor general, John Sauer, filed an amicus brief with the court in December.
The brief argued, “President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.”
“Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech. Indeed, President Trump and his rival both used TikTok to connect with voters during the recent Presidential election campaign, with President Trump doing so much more effectively. As this Court instructs, the First Amendment’s ‘constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.’”
The brief continued, “Furthermore, President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged.”
“This Court should be deeply concerned about setting a precedent that could create a slippery slope toward global government censorship of social media speech,” Sauer wrote in the filing. “The power of a Western government to ban an entire social-media platform with more than 100 million users, at the very least, should be considered and exercised with the most extreme care—not reviewed on a ‘highly expedited basis.’”
Trump vowed to “save” the app during his presidential campaign.
The president-elect met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to discuss the matter.
“You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said during a press conference earlier this month.
Congress passed the ban earlier this year in response to widespread opposition to Israel spreading like wildfire on the app. It was signed into law by Joe Biden in April.
TikTok has over 170 million users in the United States alone.
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