The divest-or-ban law, which passed Congress with wide bipartisan majorities and was signed by President Biden in April, would ban TikTok from the U.S. as of Jan. 19 unless it divests from its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance. The Supreme Court could still step in before then.
Across roughly 2 1/2 hours of argument, the justices asked piercing questions about TikTok’s First Amendment defense, posing hypotheticals about Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post, Elon Musk’s social platform X and even Politico’s foreign-based owner.
“Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “They don’t care about the expression. That’s shown by the remedy. They’re not saying TikTok has to stop. They’re saying the Chinese have to stop controlling TikTok.”
“So, it’s not a direct burden on the expression at all,” he continued
TikTok, which has more than 170 million U.S. users, has said divestment is practically impossible, and the platform would “go dark” in just days.
“These are the kind of things our enemies do. It is not what we do in this country,” said Jeffrey Fisher, an attorney representing the content creators challenging the ban.
At the center of the case is whether the government’s national security interest can supersede the free speech concerns raised by TikTok and a group of creators who challenged the law as violating the First Amendment.
The Justice Department has raised alarm that the Chinese government could obtain access to U.S. users’ data or covertly manipulate the TikTok content algorithm.
“Just on the data collection, that seems like a huge concern for the future of the country,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
He suggested TikTok’s vast trove of information on Americans could be used “to develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people, people who a generation from now will be working in the FBI or the CIA or in the State Department.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
