By Brendan Scanland
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held oral arguments in a high-stakes case reviewing a law that could ban the popular social media app, TikTok.
Under a bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed by President Biden last year, TikTok must cut ties with China-based parent company, ByteDance, before January 19 or else be banned in the U.S.
At the center of this challenge in the Supreme Court is freedom of speech and national security. TikTok and some of its users sued to block the law, saying it violates the First Amendment right of its users in the United States.
“The government places restrictions on speech all the time for reasons other than a desire to suppress the speech,” said Michael Dimino, Professor of Law at Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Pennsylvania. “In this case, the government wants to protect against potential national security problems, and as a result, they have forced the sale of TikTok,” he added.
Today’s arguments lasted more than two hours. Throughout the process, conservative justices, who hold a majority, were skeptical of arguments made by attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance. The plaintiffs argued the law opens the door to a dangerous form of censorship.
“TikTok’s argument isn’t ByteDance’s rights to speech are being violated, it’s Americans’ rights to access information would be violated and Americans’ rights to distribute their information and their speech on this platform would be limited by the ban,” said Dimino.
In recent years, U.S. officials have raised concerns about the app’s threat to national security. Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated those concerns in court today, citing “a foreign adversary gathering data and information about the 170 million people in the U.S. who use TikTok.”
“The government is arguing that this really shouldn’t be considered a First Amendment case at all because the speech that is being suppressed, or at least that the government is trying to suppress, is the speech of the Chinese Communist Party. And no foreign actor has a right to speak and the government says no American has a First Amendment right to speak on a foreign controlled platform.”
There are major consequences to the decision, especially for TikTok users. Many users are full-time content creators and profit from their TikTok content.
But with a conservative court majority appearing to side more with the government’s national security argument, time could soon be up for TikTok.
Before the Jan. 19 deadline, the court is expected to either uphold the law or toss the case—or delay its ruling, putting the law on hold. A delayed ruling was requested by President-elect Donald Trump in an amicus brief to the court on Dec. 27.
