WASHINGTON — TikTok asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a law that could ban the video-based social media app, which has millions of U.S. users.
At issue is a bipartisan measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden that would take effect on January 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, unless the justices intervene.
The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would require TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the platform to a U.S. company or risk a ban.
TikTok has challenged the law, saying it violates the right to free speech under the First Amendment.
“The law will shut down one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
“This will in turn silence the speech of the applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, the arts and other matters of public interest,” she added.
TikTok asked the Supreme Court to take action before January 6.
“Today, TikTok is asking the court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to its ban on speech and conclude that it violates the First Amendment,” company spokesman Michael Hughes said in a statement.
If the Supreme Court temporarily blocks the law, it should result in a final decision by the justices on whether the law is constitutionally required. The court could expedite the hearing of the case, meaning it could issue a final ruling within a few months.
If the judges reject TikTok’s application, the law would come into effect as planned. TikTok could still try to get the Supreme Court to review the law while it remains in effect, but the justices are said to have already sent a signal that they think the company is unlikely to prevail.
The federal government has defended the law on national security grounds, saying there are concerns about the Chinese government’s influence over the app.
TikTok, as well as eight individual users and Based Politics Inc., a conservative group that uses TikTok, all filed separate lawsuits saying the law also violates their right to free speech.
The individual challengers filed their own petitions with the Supreme Court. For people who rely on TikTok, the ban would be “devastating to their livelihoods, their communities, and their ability to express themselves and hear the ideas of their choice,” their lawyers wrote.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law, despite the fact that it implicated the First Amendment and required very careful review.
Based on court precedent, the three-judge panel concluded that the law served a compelling government interest and was sufficiently specifically tailored to further that interest.
The appeals court ruled that the government’s national security reasons, including concerns that the Chinese government could access data on U.S. users and potentially manipulate the app’s content, were legitimate.
TikTok was launched in the US in 2018 and has become increasingly popular, now with 170 million American users.
The algorithm provides users with streams of short video content that adapts based on their interests.
There were national security concerns from the start, with Trump at one point trying to ban it. Trump has since equivocated, saying during the recent election that he could “save TikTok.”
Trump said Monday that he has a “warm place” in his heart for TikTok when asked about the law. He was also scheduled to meet with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Monday, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
The company has the support of civil liberties groups that have joined the legal battle on grounds of freedom of speech.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
