TikTok filed another emergency petition on Monday, this time with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to temporarily block a law that will ban the popular app from the States next month.
The app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, said the law tramples on the First Amendment rights of its 170 million monthly users. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law banning TikTok from the U.S. starting Jan. 19, 2025, unless its Chinese owners sell its American business.
“Congress’ unprecedented attempt to single out applicants and bar them from operating one of the most significant speech platforms in this nation presents grave constitutional problems that this court likely will not allow to stand,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote in the Monday filing, obtained by TheWrap.
The chief concern U.S. lawmakers have with TikTok is that it doubles as a spyware app for the Chinese government; TikTok, according to Chinese law, is required to share user data with China’s communist government, if it is asked to do so.
Most Americans don’t seem to be too concerned with China’s government having easy access to their data, though. Only 32% of Americans are in favor of the U.S. government banning TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey in September of 10,678 respondents aged 18 and older.
In Monday’s legal update, TikTok’s lawyers argued the app’s close ties to China’s government do not warrant a ban. “Strict scrutiny applies here just as it would if Congress banned a specified American citizen from operating a particular American newspaper merely because a foreign nation might be able to control what he printed or misuse his subscriber data,” the filing stated.
This is just the latest effort by TikTok and its parent company to try and fend off the looming ban.
Last week, TikTok and ByteDance filed an emergency injunction calling for an appeals court to temporarily block the law that bans the app, saying it would grant “breathing room” for the U.S. Supreme Court to “conduct an orderly review.” TikTok also pointed to President-elect Donald Trump’s comment earlier this year that he was going to “save TikTok” in its filing, but the request was denied on Friday, Dec. 13.
Trump, during a press conference on Monday, reiterated he’d like to keep TikTok in the U.S. He said he’d “take a look” at saving TikTok, noting he had a “warm spot” in his heart for it because it helped get young people to vote for him.
Source link
