Appeals court upholds TikTok ban law

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the popular app or face a U.S. ban. 

A three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the law does not violate the First Amendment, as TikTok has argued. The decision brings a ban one step closer to reality, with about a month until the law goes into effect. 

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. 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. For these reasons the petitions are denied,” the court wrote.

The divest-or-ban law moved rapidly through Congress earlier this year amid widespread bipartisan national security concerns over the app’s China-based parent company ByteDance. It was signed by President Biden in April. 

The law gives ByteDance about nine months — until Jan. 19 — to divest from TikTok or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores. However, Biden could also opt to give the company a 90-day extension. 

TikTok condemned the decision in a Friday statement and suggested the company would appeal it to the Supreme Court, as widely expected.

“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,” TikTok said in a post on X.

“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”

TikTok and ByteDance sued to block the law in May, alongside several content creators, arguing that divestment was practically impossible. As a result, the law effectively bans TikTok nationwide, which they contend is unconstitutional. 

However, the Biden administration has argued that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government to “achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests.”

The court sided with the Biden administration, finding that the “significant” impacts of the TikTok ban are justified by the government’s national security concerns.

“Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by January 19, 2025 — or the President grants a 90-day extension based upon progress towards a qualified divestiture — its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” the court wrote in Friday’s opinion.

“Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication,” it continued. “That burden is attributable to the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution,” referring to the People’s Republic of China.  

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the decision Friday as setting a “flawed and dangerous precedent.”

“Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and communicate with people around the world,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement.

“The government cannot shut down an entire communications platform unless it poses extremely serious and imminent harm, and there’s no evidence of that here,” he added.

TikTok is widely expected to appeal the decision with the Supreme Court.

Despite the administration’s victory, the future of the divest-or-ban law remains uncertain with President-elect Trump set to take office. 

After launching similar efforts to ban TikTok during his first term, Trump has changed his stance on the app, arguing that a ban would empower Facebook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  

On the campaign trail in September, the former president urged Americans to vote for him to “save TikTok.” 

With a new Trump term on the horizon, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has reportedly reached out to tech mogul and close Trump ally Elon Musk for insight into the incoming administration, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Updated at 12:41 p.m EST