WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal court on Friday upheld a law that requires China’s ByteDance to sell the operations of the popular TikTok app in the country by early next year or face a ban.
The decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court or a full panel of the court.
Court judges Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao and Douglas Ginsburg considered legal challenges filed by and by users against the law that gives ByteDance until January 19 to sell or divest TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a .
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The court said the law “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary and was part of a broader effort to combat a well-founded threat to national security posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”
The ruling is a victory for the Justice Department and the app’s opponents and a devastating blow to the . The decision now raises the possibility of an unprecedented ban, in just six weeks, of an app used by 170 million Americans.
There was no immediate comment from the Justice Department or TikTok on the decision.
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President Joe Biden, who signed the law in April, can grant a one-time extension of up to 90 days, but only if ByteDance has made significant progress in finding a buyer.
The court acknowledged that its decision could lead to January 19 without an extension from Biden.
“Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media,” the court said, which was due to China’s “hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not the U.S. government, which has engaged with TikTok through of a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”
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The Justice Department says that under Chinese ownership, TikTok poses a serious threat to national security due to its access to vast personal data of Americans, asserting that China can covertly manipulate the information users consume through TikTok .
TikTok and ByteDance argue that the law is unconstitutional and violates Americans’ free speech rights. They call it “a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open internet.”
President-elect Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November election that he would not allow a ban on TikTok.
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(By David Shepardson, Chris Sanders and Mike Scarcella)
