US court upholds law ordering sale of TikTok

A US federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent firm ByteDance, in a move that could lead to a ban on the popular short video platform as early as next month.

The law — which was signed by US President Joe Biden in April — gave ByteDance one year to divest from TikTok or be banned from app stores in the US.

For a long time, US officials had raised alarm over the app's growing popularity among the country's youth, claiming that it could allow China to spy on its nearly 170 million users in the country.

TikTok argued that the law violates the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US constitution.

But the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday rebuffed the company's challenge of the statute, stating that the law was in line with long-standing regulatory practices and there was no intention to suppress specific expressions.

"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States," the court said in an opinion written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg.

"Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States."

TikTok to appeal again

TikTok said it now plans to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court.

"The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people," they said.

The spokesperson added that unless stopped, the statute "will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025."

Looming ban

TikTok said in its petition that a separation of ByteDance as mandated by the law was "simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally."

The app's fate now lies in the hands of two US presidents.

President Biden can grant a 90-day extension of the January 19 deadline to force a sale. However, it's unclear if ByteDance could show it had made progress towards a divestiture required to trigger the extension or if the government in Beijing would approve a sale.

President-elect Donald Trump — who takes office on January 20 — was unsuccessful in banning TikTok during his previous term in 2020. But in a change of stance, he said before the November presidential election that he would not allow the TikTok ban.

dvv/zc (AP, dpa, Reuters)