TikTok on Monday asked the Supreme Court to act urgently to block a federal law that would have banned the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance have urged the courts to go to work before the law’s January 19 deadline. A similar claim was made by content creators who rely on the platform for revenue and TikTok’s more than 170 million users in the US.
“A modest delay in implementing the law will provide breathing room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and for the new Administration to evaluate this matter – before this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow citizens and the world is closed,” the lawyers wrote. companies reported to the Supreme Court.
Acceptance of Trump
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported the ban but later promised to “save TikTok” during the campaign, said his administration would look into the situation.
“As you know, I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said during a press conference at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. His campaign saw the platform as a way to reach younger, less politically engaged voters.
The shutdown, which lasted just a month, would cost TikTok about a third of its US daily users and significant ad revenue, the companies said.
The case could be of interest to the court because it challenges free speech rights to the government’s stated goals of protecting national security, while also raising new issues about social media platforms.
The request first goes to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from courts in the nation’s capital. He will appeal to almost all nine justices.
TikTok business
On Friday, a panel of federal judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected an emergency appeal to block the law, a procedural ruling that would have allowed the case to go to the Supreme Court.
