Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned
The Supreme Court ruled against TikTok rejecting the company’s First Amendment challenge to a law that effectively bans it starting on January 19. The unanimous decision may deal a death blow to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which serves up short-form videos that are a leading source of information and entertainment to 170 million Americans, especially younger ones. In accepting the government’s arguments that China’s control of TikTok’s corporate parent poses a threat to the nation’s security, the court ruled that Congress was entitled to put its owners to the choice between selling it or letting it go dark. The decision, delivered on an exceptionally abbreviated schedule, has few rivals in the annals of important First Amendment precedents and in the vast practical impact it will have. Although TikTok’s lawyer told the justices last week that the app would “go dark” if it lost the case, it was not clear how quickly a shutdown would play out.
Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned