TikTok on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis to block a federal law that would ban the popular platform in the US unless its China-based parent company ByteDance agrees to sell it.
Lawyers for the company and ByteDance urged judges to intervene before the law’s January 19 deadline. A similar plea has been made by content creators who rely on the platform for income and some of TikTok’s more than 170 million users in the United States.
“A modest delay in enforcement will create breathing room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and the new Administration to evaluate this matter — before closing this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow citizens and the world,” the companies told the Supreme Court.
US President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported the ban but then pledged during his election campaign to “save TikTok,” said his administration would take a look at the situation.
“As you know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. His campaign saw the program as a way to reach younger, less politically engaged voters.
Trump was meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, according to two people familiar with the president-elect’s plans who were not authorized to talk about them publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The companies said a shutdown that lasts just one month would cause TikTok to lose significant advertising revenue and about a third of its daily users in the United States.
The case could attract the court’s attention because it pits free speech rights against the government’s stated goals of protecting national security, while raising new issues about social media platforms.
The request first goes to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from courts in the nation’s capital. He will certainly seek input from all nine judges.
The ban is scheduled to take effect on January 19
On Friday, a panel of federal judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied an emergency motion to block the law, a procedural ruling that allowed the case to be moved to the Supreme Court.
The same committee had earlier unanimously upheld the law on challenging the First Amendment, claiming that it violated free speech rights.
Without a court-ordered freeze, the law will take effect on January 19, exposing app stores and internet hosting services that offer TikTok to potential fines.
It will be up to the Justice Department to enforce the law, investigate potential violations and seek sanctions. But lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance argued that the Trump Justice Department might halt enforcement or otherwise seek to mitigate the law’s more serious consequences. Trump takes office the day after the law takes effect.
The Supreme Court can temporarily suspend the law so that justices can give full consideration to the First Amendment and other issues. They can also quickly schedule arguments and try to reach a decision by January 19.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court can deny the emergency appeal, allowing the law to take effect as scheduled.
With this last possibility in mind, the companies’ lawyers requested a ruling on their emergency request by January 6, 2025, because they would need time to “coordinate with service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok-only platform in the United States.”
The case made a relatively quick journey through the courts once a bipartisan majority in Congress approved the law and President Joe Biden signed it in April.
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