On Monday, December 9th, the Chinese company ByteDance and its overseas short video application TikTok are seeking to halt the enforcement of a ban and are awaiting review by the United States Supreme Court.
ByteDance and TikTok have filed an emergency motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, requesting the court to temporarily block the enforcement of a U.S. government law and await the review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The law in question is called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Act,” which requires ByteDance, the parent company, to divest TikTok by January 19, 2025, or face a ban.
They argue that without this motion, the law would take effect, leading to the closure of TikTok, which boasts over 170 million domestic users in the United States.
In 2023, TikTok took similar legal action to block a ban on the app in the state of Montana. Montana had issued a preliminary ban on TikTok.
Last Friday, the Court of Appeals ruled on the lawsuit brought by TikTok and ByteDance against the U.S. government, rejecting the request for a review and upholding the law passed by the U.S. government.
TikTok and ByteDance contend that the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Act” passed by the U.S. government is unconstitutional and infringes on Americans’ freedom of speech. They argue that this action goes against the traditional American value of an open and interconnected internet.
Three judges unanimously agreed on this ruling. The appeals court judges wrote in their opinion, “The First Amendment exists to protect America’s freedom of speech. The government’s actions here are entirely to safeguard the freedom from encroachment by foreign hostile states and to limit the ability of those hostile states to collect data on the American people.”
The ruling stated, “The law is carefully crafted to target foreign adversaries’ control specifically and is part of a broader effort to counter the national security threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC, Communist China) with ample evidence.”