US Appeals court upheld TikTok ban signed into law

Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa

A federal appeals court has upheld the TikTok ban President Biden signed into law earlier this year. The law requires Chinese company ByteDance to divest and sell TikTok or the platform will be banned in the United States comes January.

The ruling was unanimous among the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. The court rejected TikTok’s argument that the law is unconstitutional and violates First Amendment rights of American TikTok users. TikTok says it will escalate the fight beyond the appeals court, seeking the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision.

If ByteDance fails to sell TikTok by January 19 then the law requires companies like Google and Apple to remove the app from their stores and for download. This would effectively prevent new sign-ups for TikTok, though it’s unclear if people who already have the app downloaded on devices would be impacted.

President Biden signed the TikTok ban into law in April. The U.S. military was proactive in banning TikTok from government devices all the way back in 2019, starting with the Navy and then moving on to other branches. Congress soon banned the app from government devices in both the House and the Senate due to TikTok’s alleged connections to the Chinese government. Chinese law requires Chinese companies to provide information to the CCP if instructed to do so.

Questions surrounding whether or not TikTok will be banned when President-elect Trump takes office in January also remain. While Trump was the first president to pursue banning TikTok in the United States, he has since promised not to do so during his second term. However his incoming cabinet seems split on the issue. The appeals court found that the U.S. government provided “persuasive evidence demonstrating that the law is tailored to protect national security.”

The appeals court opinion also notes that TikTok “never squarely denies that it has ever manipulated content at the direction” of the CCP. The ban will take effect on January 19, 2025—just a day before President-elect Trump is set to assume office. Want to stay up-to-date on everything happening with TikTok v. the United States? Check out DMN Pro’s music industry litigation tracker.