A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld a law mandating Chinese-based ByteDance to dispossess its popular short video app TikTok in the United States by early 2025 or face a ban.
This ruling might be appealed to the Supreme Court or full appeals court panel.
U.S. appeals court Judges Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao and Douglas Ginsburg had all considered the legal challenges brought by TikTok and users, against the law that gives ByteDance until January 19 to sell or dispossess TikTok’s U.S. assets or worse, face a ban.
The appeals court further said the law, “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”
President Joe Biden, who signed the bill in April, can grant a one-time extension of up to 90 days, but this can only happen if ByteDance has made major strides in finding a buyer.
The Justice Department added that under Chinese ownership, TikTok faces a serious national security threat because it has access to vast personal data of Americans. This has lead to claims that China can secretly manipulate information that Americans consume via TikTok.
TikTok and ByteDance have however, argued that the law was unconstitutional and infringes on the free speech rights of Americans’. The company even went as far as calling it “a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet.”
The U.S President-elect Donald Trump, who tried albeit unsuccessfully to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, announced just before the November elections that he would not allow the ban on TikTok, – an app used by 170 million Americans.
The law which Biden signed prohibits app stores like Apple and Alphabet’s Google from offering TikTok. It also bars internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance dispossess TikTok by the deadline.
While U. S. officials have warned that TikTok’s management is answerable to the Chinese government, which could compel it to share the data of its U.S. users, TikTok has denied it has or would ever share U.S. user data, accusing American lawmakers in the lawsuit of advancing “speculative” concerns.
