The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law that has commonly been referred to as the TikTok ban. The law requires the short-form video app’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell it by Sunday, Jan. 19, or be shut down in the United States.
The unsigned opinion said there’s no doubt that TikTok provides its 170 million American users a place for expression and engagement, but Congress determined divestiture is necessary to address well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices, and relationship with a foreign adversary.
The justices heard a last-minute appeal during the week of Jan. 6, in which the company and its users argued the law infringes on their First Amendment rights. The justices disagreed.
“It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component,” the justices wrote in the opinion. “Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all. And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement.”
The law is officially called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. It was approved by Congress on a bipartisan basis in 2024. It prohibits distributing, maintaining or providing internet hosting services for an app that’s under the control of a foreign adversary. In this case, the app is TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China, the foreign adversary.
TikTok has announced that it plans to shut down the app for American users. The company said access will be disabled, and that users who open it will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the law. TikTok said this will allow them to quickly bring the app back online if the law is lifted, or a qualified sale of the company is approved.
Multiple news outlets reported that President Joe Biden will not enforce the ban and will leave the decision to the Trump administration. There is an option to implement a 90-day extension if the White House determines progress is being made on finding a buyer outside China. President-elect Donald Trump said he wants to make a deal to save TikTok.
Apple and Google are expected to remove TikTok from their app stores to avoid liability. The law has a penalty of $5,000 per user for any company that allows downloads or updates. If every current user updated the app, the collective fine to the companies that allowed it would be $850 billion.
