TikTok's lawyers argued in front of the Supreme Court on Friday that the social network's ban violates the First Amendment rights of TikTok and the American people. The Supreme Court this morning heard arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could effectively ban TikTok in the United States.
The bill, officially called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Control Applications Act, would give TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, until January 19, 2025, to sell its U.S. operations or sell it domestically. The law imposes a penalty of facing a business ban. Friday's trade comes just nine days before the sell-or-ban deadline.
TikTok's lawyer, Noel Francisco, has vowed that the social network will effectively shut down on January 19 unless the Supreme Court intervenes. He also noted President-elect Donald Trump's support for the app.
“Unless President Trump exercises his extension powers, the platform will be shut down absent a sale,” Francisco said. “But he can't do that on January 19th. On January 19th, we still have President Biden. And on January 19th, as I understand it, we were shut down. On January 20th, 21st, 22nd, we may be in a different world. Again, that's why we're issuing a preliminary injunction here, just to give everyone a little bit of breathing room. That's one of the reasons why I think it makes perfect sense to give them space.”
Francisco argued that TikTok's For You algorithm represents the company's editorial discretion over the content it distributes and should be protected by free speech rights.
When asked if the problem with the anti-sale law was that there was a limited time limit for selling social networks, Francisco argued that it would not be possible to sell the app under any timeline. TikTok has continually maintained that a sale is impossible because China would block the export of its algorithms. Francisco also argued that TikTok would be a fundamentally different service without access to content from global creators.
Francisco also claimed that the new version of TikTok in the US with the new algorithm will prohibit any coordination with ByteDance's global engineering team and that the new version will be completely different. He also claimed that it would take years to rebuild a whole new team of engineers to create a new version.
Jeffrey Fisher, a lawyer representing TikTok content creators, argued that the law also violates their rights and that they have the right to work with the publisher of their choice.
The Supreme Court last month agreed to hear ByteDance and TikTok's challenge to the ban on sales, despite concerns from the Justice Department that a delay would pose a continuing threat to national security. A week after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, lawyers representing President-elect Donald Trump asked the court to suspend the ban.
Trump's lawyers said in a filing that the sell-or-ban deadline, the day before Inauguration Day, was “unfortunate timing” and would interfere with his “ability to manage the foreign policy of the United States.” He insisted that he would.
Trump called for a ban on the app during his first term, but took a different approach during his 2024 campaign, vowing to preserve the app if elected.
President Biden signed the ban into law in April 2024. The bill followed long-standing claims by the U.S. government that TikTok's relationship with China poses a national security risk and exposes sensitive information about Americans to the Chinese government.
If ByteDance fails to sell the platform by January 19th, it will be illegal for app stores and internet hosting services to distribute the social network.