The United States Supreme Court unanimously upheld legislation banning TikTok this week that will take effect Sunday.
The court’s ruling in TikTok v. Garland held that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was constitutional, meaning it may be legally enforced. The act will “Make it unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services, distribute, maintain or update the social media platform TikTok, unless U.S. operation of the platform is severed from Chinese control.”
This will not ban American users from using the platform, but it does prevent them from updating the app.
The Court required ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell the app to dissolve the ban, but ByteDance refused to sell. The Bejiing-based company condemned any forced sale of the app last year, according to The New York Times.
The Court deemed its sale requirement as a preventative measure against “China—a designated foreign adversary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U.S. TikTok users,” according to the case.
Last year, the Supreme Court and TikTok CEO Shou Chew spoke with one another and discussed whether TikTok posed a threat to American interests. However, officials stood firm in their national security concerns, according to AP News and NPR.
The ban sparked public outcry regarding free speech, government intervention and technological literacy among justices of the Supreme Court. The platform has achieved immense popularity among young adults and teens, as a third of U.S. adults and half of teens said they use TikTok daily. TikTok users who get their news from the app regularly have doubled since 2020, according to Pew Research.
The Supreme Court qualified the TikTok ban as constitutional under First Amendment scrutiny, or strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny cases like this are ruled based on whether the censorship of speech is excessive and of “important government interest under intermediate scrutiny,” according to the case.
“A law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny,” according to the case.
However, many free speech advocates disagree. Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU National Security Project, detailed how he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a press release. He cautioned that the decision raised a power imbalance between the judiciary and executive branches of government.
“It must show that the ban is the only way to prevent serious, imminent harm to national security and that the ban limits no more speech than necessary to accomplish that purpose,” according to Toomey.
The Court said in its opinion it proved no excessive speech was censored in its ruling, but the act will affect over 170 million U.S. users this upcoming week. Chew released a statement on TikTok in which he thanked Donald Trump for speaking positively about the platform in an interview with Fox News Special Report, as he claimed to plan on figuring out the problem. Chew also thanked American users for their dynamic use and support of the platform.
“This is a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship,” Chew said in his statement. “As we’ve said, TikTok is a place where people can create communities, discover new interests and express themselves including over seven million American businesses who earn a living and gain new customers using our platform. We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a President who truly understands our platform.”
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