{"id":123039,"date":"2025-01-17T20:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T20:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/supreme-court-upholds-law-that-could-ban-tiktok-in-the-u-s-leaving-the-matter-to-trump-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-01-17T20:16:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T20:16:46","slug":"supreme-court-upholds-law-that-could-ban-tiktok-in-the-u-s-leaving-the-matter-to-trump-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/supreme-court-upholds-law-that-could-ban-tiktok-in-the-u-s-leaving-the-matter-to-trump-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court upholds law that could ban TikTok in the U.S., leaving the matter to Trump – USA TODAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2212 The Supreme Court<\/a> on Friday unanimously upheld<\/a> a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States on Sunday, siding with the government’s national security concerns over the First Amendment rights of the company and its 170 million TikTok users.
That decision shifts the focus<\/a> to whether President-elect Donald Trump can intervene after he takes office on Monday.
Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first administration, has since promised to \u201csave\u201d the wildly popular platform<\/a>, though it’s unclear how he could do so.
Minutes before the court released its decision, Trump said on social media<\/a> he\u2019d just spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about TikTok and other issues.
\u201cIt is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,\u201d Trump posted<\/a>.
After the court upheld the law, Trump said he will decide what to do “in the not too distant future.”
“Stay tuned!” Trump posted<\/a>.
Alan Rozenshtein, an expert on the law and technology policy at the University of Minnesota Law School, said none of Trump\u2019s options are \u201cparticularly promising.\u201d
\u201cThe bottom line?\u201d Rozenshtein wrote in an analysis posted on Lawfare<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cThere are a lot of moving pieces and it’s foolish to make particularly confident predictions, but the most likely outcome is that TikTok goes dark on the 19th and stays that way for the immediate future.\u201d
The company has said that even a temporary ban on the short-term video app would have \u201cdevastating\u201d effects on TikTok\u2019s ability to attract users and content creators. About 170 million Americans \u2212 and more than 1 billion people worldwide \u2212 use TikTok, according to the company.
More:<\/strong>President Biden won’t enforce looming TikTok ban, putting fate in the hands of Trump<\/a>
The court’s decision came a week after the justices heard more than two hours of heated debate on Jan. 10<\/a> on whether the government can require the short-form video app to divest from its parent company, China-based ByteDance.
TikTok called that a “massive, unprecedented restriction” of free speech.
“One of America’s most popular speech platforms will shut down in nine days,” Noel Francisco, an attorney for TikTok who served as solicitor general during Trump’s first administration, told the justices on Jan. 10. “That shouldn’t happen.”
In an unsigned opinion, the court said that while TikTok offers a \u201cdistinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,\u201d Congress has determined that divestiture is needed because of \u201cwell-supported national security concerns.\u201d
There were no noted dissents, although Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch gave their own explanations for why the law should be upheld.
The court rejected TikTok’s argument that the law must meet the toughest test for overcoming a 1st Amendment challenge.
The sell-or-be-banned provision addresses an important government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression and doesn’t go farther than it needs to address that goal, the court said.
The justices made that determination based on lawmakers’ concerns about data collection and said they didn’t have to analyze if content manipulation fears were justifiable because one legitimate basis is sufficient.
The court also cautioned that its analysis is \u201cnarrowly focused\u201d on how the law applies to TikTok, given the abbreviated amount of time the justices had to evaluate it because of the impending deadline.
\u201cIt\u2019s really limited to the unique facts of this case,\u201d said Darpana Sheth Nunziata, an expert on constitutional cases involving freedom of expression.
Still, free speech advocates said the court\u2019s decision paves the way for additional \u201crepressive policies.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, said the court has \u201cweakened the 1st Amendment and markedly expanded the government\u2019s power to restrict speech in the name of national security.\u201d
Related<\/strong>Can Trump save TikTok? The \u2018Art of the Deal\u2019 President wants to try<\/a>
The Department of Justice had argued the restriction is not on speech but on a foreign adversary’s ability to control a widely used means of communication. Unless TikTok is sold, the government said, China can gather data on Americans or manipulate the content on TikTok to shape U.S. opinion.
“The Chinese government’s control of TikTok poses a grave threat to national security,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court last week.
She said before Trump steps in, he should review all the updated national security information since he was last in office.
In Friday’s opinion, the court described Trump’s efforts during his first administration to separate TikTok from ByteDance.
Despite his past concerns, the “Art of the Deal” president-elect<\/a> had urged the Supreme Court to pause the ban to give him time to “negotiate a resolution.”
TikTok ban<\/strong>Trump talks to China’s Xi Jinping hours before Supreme Court decision<\/a>
Once in office, Trump could direct his attorney general not to enforce the law. But it’s uncertain if Apple, Google and other conduits for the app will feel that\u2019s enough protection from the law\u2019s stiff penalties.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice for attorney general, declined during her confirmation hearing Wednesday to commit to enforcing the law.
Bondi said she would “in general” defend U.S. laws against constitutional attacks, but said she couldn’t make that specific pledge about the TikTok ban.
Trump could try to take advantage of ambiguity in the law as to whether the president can declare that TikTok is no longer controlled by a Chinese entity. \u00a0
And there are questions about whether Trump can extend the deadline for TikTok to be divested from ByteDance.
Asked about that during the Supreme Court’s debate, Prelogar called it a “statutory interpretation question.”
She also said TikTok may have been playing a game of chicken with the U.S. and would find a way to divest once it was clear whether the deadline would hold.
Francisco, TikTok’s attorney, told the court the platform would “go dark” on Sunday unless the law was blocked.
\u201cEssentially, the platform shuts down,” he said.
But the law doesn’t require TikTok to act. The penalties fall on the app stores and companies such as Oracle that host TikTok’s content in the U.S. Changes by those companies would make the platform harder to use over time but wouldn’t necessarily stop its immediate use for people who already have the app.
On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said enforcing the law “will be a process that plays out over time.”
Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said the only definitive way Trump can stop the ban is to work with Congress to reverse it \u2013 which seems unlikely.
\u201cMore realistically, this gives Trump a platform to speak out against the past administration, the Supreme Court, and others who he might want to blame for TikTok being banned,\u201d Hurwitz said. \u201cThat political dynamic will be interesting to watch in the coming months.\u201d
Trump’s change of heart on TikTok may, in part, be related to the app’s use in connecting him to young voters. His account had 14.8 million followers as of last week.
\u201cTikTok\u2019s a great platform that many Americans use and was great for his campaign and getting his message out,\u201d Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump\u2019s incoming national security adviser told Fox News Thursday.
Trump also had good things to say about TikTok after he met last year with billionaire Jeff Yass, a major conservative donor with financial ties to ByteDance.
Trump has invited TikTok’s chief executive to attend his inauguration<\/a>.
On Friday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew thanked Trump<\/a> \u201cfor his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.\u201d
\u201cWe are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform,\u201d Chew said, \u201cone who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2212 The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States on Sunday, siding with the government’s national security concerns over the First Amendment rights of the company and its 170 million TikTok users.That decision shifts the focus to whether President-elect Donald Trump can intervene after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-123039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}