TikTok asks Supreme Court to delay divest-or-ban law

TikTok filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court on Monday seeking to delay a law that would ban the video-sharing platform nationwide if TikTok doesn’t divest from its Chinese parent company.

The company’s application asks the court to put the Jan. 19 divest-or-ban deadline on hold until the justices resolve TikTok’s First Amendment claims on their normal docket.

“The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration. This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote in the application.

By default, the company’s Supreme Court application will go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals arising from the D.C. Circuit. Roberts could act on the application alone or refer it to the full court for a vote.

The platform asked the high court to act by Jan. 6, roughly two weeks ahead of the potential ban, to provide app stores and internet hosting providers with enough notice to comply, if needed.

TikTok brought its fight to the justices after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the company’s legal challenge to the law and declined to delay the deadline until TikTok exhausts its appeal.

Several content creators also asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block the law from taking effect. The same group of creators similarly filed alongside TikTok at the D.C. Circuit, and the cases were heard together.

“Even a temporary shutdown of TikTok will cause permanent harm to applicants — a representative group of Americans who use TikTok to speak, associate, and listen — as well as the public at large,” the creators’ lawyers wrote.

The law, which gave TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance about nine months to divest from the app or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores, was passed by large bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Biden in April.

TikTok has claimed the law violates the free speech rights of both the company itself and its content creators. The lower court rejected those claims and several other constitutional arguments TikTok mounted.

The appeals court ruled that the law clears the “high bar” required for constitutional challenges, finding that its “significant” impacts were justified by the government’s national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China.

The Supreme Court rarely grants emergency relief. Of the more than two dozen emergency appeals resolved by the full court so far this term, only two have been successful, according to The Hill’s analysis of the court’s docket.

"The Supreme Court has an established record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech,” TikTok said in a statement posted to the social platform X. “Today, we are asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.”

TikTok’s application insists its challenge is one of those rare cases, arguing that a delay is appropriate because there is “no imminent threat” to national security. TikTok went on to note how President-elect Trump has expressed sympathy with the video-sharing platform.

“An interim injunction is also appropriate because it will give the incoming Administration time to determine its position, as the President-elect and his advisors have voiced support for saving TikTok,” the company wrote.

Trump voiced opposition to the divest-or-ban law on the campaign trail and promised to “save TikTok.” However, the president-elect has offered few details about his plans to protect the app since winning the election.

When asked Monday whether he would take steps to prevent the ban from taking effect, Trump said he will “take a look.”

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, claiming he “won youth by 34 points, and there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with it.”

Updated at 4:18 p.m. ET

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