TikTok has formally appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a pending law that could have barred the app from the market if it was not spun off from parent company ByteDance.
In an emergency motion filed on Monday (December 16), TikTok’s lawyers cited the First Amendment, saying “Congress targeted the app by introducing the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries-Controlled Apps Act, enforcing “Resulting in massive and unprecedented restrictions on speech,” the bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden in April 2024.
In a statement posted to its website on Monday, TikTok said the “Supreme Court has a strong record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech” and “requires courts to take the traditional approach in free speech cases: imposing the strictest bans on speech review and concluded that it violated the First Amendment.”
TikTok has more than 170 million monthly users in the United States.
U.S. lawmakers on Friday (December 13) issued a warning to Google and Apple to prepare to remove TikTok from their app stores by January 19, 2025, if its China-based parent company Byte Beat has not yet sold the platform.
President-elect Donald Trump waded into the debate over TikTok’s future in the United States on Monday, telling a news conference that he had “a warm place in America.” [his] Heart” application. He said the app had an impact on the youth vote he received in recent elections.
Latest developments in this field Here’s the high-stakes battle between U.S. lawmakers and social video apps U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Washington Circuit Court) decided last Friday (December 6) to reject TikTok’s legal challenge arrive law.
Last Monday (December 9), TikTok and its parent company ByteDance filed an emergency motion with the Court of Appeal, requesting a temporary injunction to delay the implementation of the law. this U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday (December 12) urged the court to deny the motion. On Friday (December 13), the Court of Appeal did so, with TikTok now seeking relief from the Supreme Court.
TikTok said in its latest emergency motion to the Supreme Court that the app “is an online platform and one of the nation’s most popular and important places for communication.” The document adds that the app is “available on [the US]”TikTok Inc. is a U.S. company indirectly owned by ByteDance Ltd., a Cayman holding company majority-owned by institutional investors.”
Lawyers for TikTok argued in the filing that because TikTok Inc. “is a U.S. company that exercises editorial discretion over the U.S. Voice Platform, the First Amendment fully protects it from attempts by Congress to ban it from operating the platform.” It is said to be vulnerable to foreign influence”.
The document continues: “Strict scrutiny applies here just as if Congress barred a specific U.S. citizen from operating a specific U.S. newspaper simply because a foreign country might be able to control the content he prints or misuse his subscriber data.”
The deadline for TikTok to divest from ByteDance or face a U.S. market ban is January 20, the day before the presidential inauguration.
In Monday’s filing, TikTok argued that “a temporary injunction is also appropriate because it would provide the incoming administration time to determine its position, as the president-elect and his advisers have expressed support for saving TikTok.”
The company also argued that “a slight delay in the implementation of the bill will create breathing space for businesses.” [the Supreme Court] “Conduct an orderly review and let the new administration evaluate the matter before shutting down a vital channel through which Americans communicate with their fellow citizens and the world.”global music business
