The law will ban the video app in the United States by Jan. 19 if its owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese company.
TikTok is one step closer to disappearing in the United States after a panel of federal judges on Friday upheld a new law that could lead to the banning of the popular Chinese-owned video app by mid-January.
The three judges, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law. The decision could be a death blow for the app in one of its biggest markets. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok to entertain and inform themselves, turning it into a cultural phenomenon. The looming loss of the app in the United States had spurred concern from free speech advocates and from the creators whose income depends on TikTok.
The decision also raises new questions for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has repeatedly signaled his support for the app, but who doesn’t have a clear path for rescuing it under the new law.
The law, signed in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company by Jan. 19 or face a ban in the United States. TikTok, which has been in the cross hairs of politicians since 2020 because of its ties to China, has said a sale is impossible, in part because it would be blocked by the Chinese government. The company argued that the law unfairly singled out TikTok and that a ban would infringe on the First Amendment rights of American users.The judges disagreed with TikTok’s argument. They said the law was “carefully crafted to deal with only control by a foreign adversary,” and didn’t run afoul of the First Amendment. “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,” the judges wrote on Friday.
TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Exactly what happens next for the app is unclear. Experts expect the company to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, though there is no guarantee that the justices will take it up.
It’s also unclear how Mr. Trump will act next. A spokesperson for his team said in November that “he will deliver” on a plan to rescue the app, but provided few details about how he would do so.
American lawmakers and intelligence officials have said that TikTok poses a national security threat under ByteDance. They say that the Chinese government’s oversight of private companies would allow it to use the app to retrieve sensitive information about Americans or to spread propaganda, though they have not publicly shared evidence that this has occurred. They have also noted that apps like Facebook and YouTube are banned in China and that the country does not allow TikTok there.
Anupam Chander, professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, is among the experts who expect the Supreme Court will take up the case and extend TikTok’s future in the United States.
“The Supreme Court, not wanting to see this app go dark on Jan. 19, will freeze the law, and then this gets handed over to the Trump administration and a Trump Department of Justice to figure out what they want to do,” he said.
Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan on Friday acknowledged the popularity of the app and noted that without a sale, many Americans could “lose access to an outlet for expression, a source of community and even a means of income.”
But, he added: “Congress judged it necessary to assume that risk given the grave national-security threats it perceived. And because the record reflects that Congress’s decision was considered, consistent with longstanding regulatory practice, and devoid of an institutional aim to suppress particular messages or ideas, we are not in a position to set it aside.”
While TikTok and ByteDance have said that a sale is not possible, there is a chance that the ruling will create new movement in that arena. Steven Mnuchin, a former Treasury secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, said in March that he was “trying to put together a group to buy TikTok, because they should be owned by U.S. businesses.” In May, the billionaire Frank McCourt also expressed interest. Other rumored suitors have included Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of the video game company Activision Blizzard. In 2020, possible buyers included Microsoft and the cloud computing company Oracle.
But a potential sale is up against major hurdles — financially, technically and politically. TikTok could cost more than $200 billion, and many potential buyers would most likely run into antitrust scrutiny. The Chinese government also issued export restrictions in August 2020 that would probably give Beijing the power to block a sale.
