A federal court of appeal Friday cited national security concerns in enforcing a law requiring companies based in China ByteDance sell the popular social media app TikTok next month or face an effective ban in the United States.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., rejected TikTok's argument that the law is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use the application.
President Joe Biden signed the law in April after members of Congress from both parties expressed concerns about TikTok's alleged ties to the Chinese communist government.
If ByteDance fails to sell TikTok by January 19, the law would force app store companies, such as Apple And Googleand internet hosting providers to stop supporting TikTok, which would effectively ban the app.
President-elect Donald Trump did not say whether he would implement the ban when he takes office next month.
The appeals court, in its majority opinion, found that the U.S. government had “presented compelling evidence demonstrating that 'the Divestment Act' is narrowly tailored to protecting national security.”
The notice notes that TikTok “never categorically denies ever manipulating content at the direction of the” People's Republic of China.
“On the merits, we reject each of petitioners' constitutional claims,” Justice Douglas Ginsburg wrote in his opinion.
“As we will explain, the portions of the law properly before this court do not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, nor the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws; constitute a draft of law illegal to reach … or work an unpaid taking of
private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” the notice states.
Ginsburg noted that the law was the result of “wide-ranging bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.”
“It was carefully designed to address only control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-founded threat to national security posed by the PRC,” the judge wrote.
Rep. Troy Balderson, R-Ohio, in March, called TikTok “a surveillance tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Americans and collect highly personal data”.
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, condemned Friday's decision, saying it “sets a flawed and dangerous precedent that gives the government far too much power to silence the speech of Americans Online.
“Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and connect with people around the world,” Toomey said.. “The government cannot shut down an entire communications platform unless it poses extremely serious and imminent harm, and there is no evidence of that here.”
TikTok and ByteDance can request that their appeal be reviewed by the full court of the DC Federal Circuit, but these requests are often denied.
The company can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but there is no automatic right to appeal to that court.
A source close to the company told NBC News it will seek an injunction pending a planned petition for the Supreme Court to take up the matter.
In September job on his own social media app, Truth Social, Trump wrote that he wasn't “doing anything with TikTok, but the other side was going to shut it down.”
“So if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump,” the current president-elect wrote at the time.
Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNBC in November that the president-elect would “keep” his campaign promises.
#Court #upholds #law #ordering #ByteDance #divest #app
,
