US Court of Appeals Upholds Law Requiring TikTok’s Sale or Ban

On December 6th, 2024, a US federal court unanimously voted to uphold a law requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest the app of Chinese ownership or face a ban in the US. The decision comes after ByteDance filed an appeal in May of this year.

In its appeal, ByteDance and TikTok argued that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (also known as “the TikTok ban”), passed in March, was “unconstitutional.”

“Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional,” continued the plaintiffs, “that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership.”

The bill explicitly mentions TikTok and ByteDance and expresses the ban as a measure “to protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary-controlled applications.”

Regarding the decision to reject the appeal, the court stated: “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

Unless ByteDance and TikTok secure an extension, the bill will take effect on January 19th, 2025. ByteDance has previously stated that it had no interest in selling US TikTok operations.

TikTok has already publicly stated that it will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court’s ruling is unlikely to differ from that of the federal court of appeals.

Any delays in meeting the January 19th deadline – whether from the Supreme Court’s decision or a 90-day extension – are significant since President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20th. Though Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, he has since publicly announced that he intends to “save” the platform.

The court of appeals’ resolution comes amid growing economic tensions between the two superpowers. These include American restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and a Chinese ban on the exports of rare earth metals to the US.