The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China. TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the US hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the US.
In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the US to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the US was engaged in war. Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm—the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan—would turn the US version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.