The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it will hear arguments about whether federal law can ban Tiktok, according to The Associated Press.
Justices will hear on January 10 arguments about whether the law forcing ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to sell Tiktok in America violates the First Amendment. ByteDance’s deadline to sell TikTok is January 19.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled on December 6 that the law to ban Tiktok was legal.
“In this case, a foreign government threatens to distort free speech on an important medium of communication. Using its hybrid commercial strategy, the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] has positioned itself to manipulate public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends,” the judges wrote. “The PRC’s ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals. Indeed, the First Amendment precludes a domestic government from exercising comparable control over a social media company in the United States.”
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Byte Dance’s emergency appeal to temporarily stop this ruling.
President Joe Biden signed a bill in April that said ByteDance needed to sell its stake in TikTok to a new owner or face the potential of being banned in America.
Under the first Trump administration, TikTok faced a ban as well. Despite this, a federal judge in 2020 ruled against the federal ban.
President-elect Donald Trump, heading into his second administration, now supports TikTok and doesn’t want to see it banned.
On Monday, Trump said he had a “warm spot” for the social media app because it helped him win the “youth by 34 points.”
“There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” the president-elect said.
On TikTok, Trump has 14.7 million followers.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected]. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
