WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Dec. 13 denied TikTok’s emergency request to temporarily block a law requiring its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a nationwide ban.
The emergency motion, filed on Dec. 9 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, sought additional time for TikTok and ByteDance to make their case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Following the court’s rejection, TikTok must now swiftly escalate its bid to the Supreme Court in an attempt to delay the looming ban.
TikTok argued the law would “shut down TikTok – one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms – for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.” However, the DC Circuit stated, “The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”
TikTok has yet to issue a public response to the ruling.
The legislation, set to take effect on Jan. 19, grants the U.S. government broad authority to ban foreign-owned apps over concerns about data collection practices. The U.S. Justice Department maintains that ByteDance’s control of TikTok poses “a continuing threat to national security.”
TikTok counters that its U.S. operations are insulated, with data stored on Oracle-operated cloud servers in the U.S. and content moderation decisions made domestically.
The Supreme Court’s decision will likely shape TikTok’s future in the U.S., but its immediate fate also hinges on two presidents: President Joe Biden, who may grant a 90-day extension before Jan. 19, and President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump, who previously attempted to ban TikTok in 2020, has indicated he opposes a full ban, adding a layer of uncertainty to the app’s future in the U.S.