TikTok gets a hearing in the Supreme Court just days before the ban is imposed

TikTok, staring down the barrel of a ban, got a last-minute Hail Mary to save itself. The Supreme Court has He agreed to hear the arguments From TikTok and its parent company ByteDance on why it should not be banned within US borders. The hearing is scheduled for January 10, just 9 days before the curtain comes down on the short video application.

TikTok has asked the Supreme Court to block enforcement of a law that would temporarily ban the app unless it is sold to a US company. The court did not immediately issue this emergency relief but it will give the platform the opportunity to present its case before it is blocked on January 19. Per the New York Times court watchersis that SCOTUS will make a decision before the sell-or-die deadline for TikTok arrives.

The hearing represents TikTok’s last chance to get its head out of the guillotine. Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act, It passed earlier this yearByteDance has been given nine months to reach an agreement to divest itself from TikTok over concerns that the platform is run by a company with ties to the Chinese government. The sale didn’t go through – obviously to ByteDance I didn’t really go looking for buyers– So the company focused entirely on the legal challenges.

So far, those expectations have subsided. TikTok filed a challenge with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and argued that banning the app would constitute a violation of the First Amendment, because it would restrict Americans’ right to express themselves on TikTok. The court consists of three judges He gave that a huge thumbs upnoting that the First Amendment exists to protect freedom of expression in the United States, and the ban represents the government acting “solely to protect that freedom from a hostile foreign state and to limit the ability of that adversary to collect data about persons in the United States.”

So, it’s up to the TikTok Supreme Court, where you’d expect to find friendly judges — or at least judges sympathetic to the idea of ​​delay. At this point, that might be all TikTok needs. The company’s CEO is Xu Ziqiu He took a trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump earlier this week and plead his case to block the ban. Trump seems at least open to that idea, in part because… He believes the platform played a role in his electoral victory.

Does it matter that Trump is the one who… The ball started rolling on the ban In the first place? Of course not. It was years ago when he thought TikTok would hurt him. now Trump thinks TikTok is actually good. All the company needs is a few more days for Trump to settle back into the White House and issue some form of intervention on the ban.

At this point, simply asking the Supreme Court to say it needs more time to hear the arguments would constitute a win for TikTok because it would likely shift the buck to Trump. Time is not on TikTok’s side, but it also doesn’t need more of it to save itself.