TikTok ban

The Supreme Court Building. Photo Credit: Joe Ravi

The Supreme Court has officially upheld the TikTok ban, finding that the underlying law doesn’t violate the First Amendment. Meanwhile, the Biden administration doesn’t intend to enforce the measure, which is slated to go into effect on the 19th.

The Supreme Court just recently released its slip opinion on TikTok’s appeal, after reports suggested that the justices were inclined to leave the ban law in place.

Diving directly into that unanimous per curiam decision, the nation’s highest court found the forced-sale requirement to be rooted in national security concerns – not an effort to “target particular speech based upon its [TikTok’s] content.”

“The prohibitions, TikTok-specific designation, and divestiture requirement regulate TikTok based on a content-neutral data collection interest,” the Supreme Court opinion reads. “And TikTok has special characteristics—a foreign adversary’s ability to leverage its control over the platform to collect vast amounts of personal data from 170 million U.S. users—that justify this differential treatment.”

Without exploring too much more of the nearly 30-page decision, this means the TikTok ban law (complete with the aforementioned January 19th sell-or-shutdown cutoff) is alive and well. Obviously, TikTok cannot find a buyer for its U.S. operations in a matter of days.

And to restate the obvious, from the get-go, the video-sharing app and its ByteDance parent have strongly resisted the possibility of selling. Nevertheless, multiple bids are emerging for TikTok in the U.S., and with push having come to shove, a divestment may be in the longer-term cards.

Closer to the present, the unprecedented situation has rendered TikTok’s precise U.S. fate unclear. First, President-elect Trump, having previously expressed a desire to save the app, provided a related update on Truth Social this morning.

“The Supreme Court decision was expected,” the president-elect wrote, “and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

Additionally, an unnamed Biden White House official told ABC News that “it will be up to the next administration to implement” the TikTok ban law. Even so, the report (and other coverage) doesn’t appear to make any mention of whether President Biden will grant a once-off 90-day extension for TikTok to find a buyer.

Under the appropriate law, the president can “grant a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days” to the divestment deadline. The original 270-day cutoff will arrive one day before the president-elect’s inauguration, but reports have indicated that the incoming administration is considering issuing a potential executive order concerning TikTok.

Of course, in keeping with the president-elect’s above-mentioned comments, there are a number of moving parts in play, and the bigger-picture outcome remains to be seen.

More immediately, though the matter receives little attention, TikTok and ByteDance (part of which belongs to the Chinese government) are highly adept negotiators.

Running with that point, under the TikTok ban law, the app could technically stay live in America (albeit while exiting the Play Store and the App Store) past the 19th. However, with many U.S.-based creators lamenting the shutdown’s effect on their income, TikTok is reportedly preparing to proactively go dark in the States on Sunday.

We’ll soon know for certain whether there’s weight to the rumored maneuver, which would seemingly drum up all manner of public pushback against TikTok’s U.S. ban – possibly as divestment talks begin in earnest.