A panel of three federal appeals court judges ruled unanimously Friday to uphold a law that could potentially ban TikTok in the United States.
The legislation, passed in April by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, requires TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell it to an American owner by Jan. 19, 2025, or face an effective ban.
In a majority opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said, "We recognize that this decision has significant implications for TikTok and its users." If the platform does not divest, the court said it "will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time."
"Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication," the opinion continued.
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Friday’s decision sets the table for TikTok to take its case to the Supreme Court.
In a statement, TikTok pinned its hopes on the Supreme Court ruling in its favor.
"The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," the company said in the statement. "Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025."
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President-elect Donald Trump, once he takes office Jan. 20, can grant a 90-day extension "based upon progress" toward the divestiture order, the opinion said. During his campaign, Trump said he would "save TikTok" from a ban if elected, though opinions among his announced Cabinet members are mixed on whether TikTok should face a ban.
TikTok argued to the judges that the order to sell the platform was unconstitutional, violating its First Amendment rights, and that China does not influence its algorithms. TikTok's creators have also argued that the platform has been unfairly targeted, noting that user data from other U.S. tech companies has been collected and sold around the world.
The majority opinion said: “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here 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.”
TikTok has become a powerful tool for Americans to make money, promote small businesses and have their voices heard. It is used by around half of the U.S. population, including dozens of politicians.
Launched in the U.S. in 2018, TikTok's popularity accelerated in 2020 during the pandemic. The app uses a recommendation algorithm to serve users a stream of short-form videos that quickly adapt to the user's interests. TikTok is best known for its young generation of social media stars, some of whom have become famous by performing viral dances or making comedy content.
Over the years, TikTok has also expanded to be an important source of news and information about everything from politics to cooking to retail. People of all ages and demographics use TikTok, with Gen Z in particular preferring it as a search engine over Google.
In 2020, political concerns about ByteDance began to surface. TikTok was created in China, which has its own version of the app called Douyin. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., began calling for a review of the national security implications of TikTok in 2019.
After TikTok users claimed to have manipulated turnout at one of Trump's rallies in 2020, then-President Trump attempted to ban the app with an executive order that was struck down in the courts. Trump has acknowledged that he believed TikTok is a national security threat, but said a ban would bolster Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, which Trump called the "enemy of the people."
Trump’s more recent embrace of TikTok leaves the ban in a political limbo. Opposition to TikTok based on national security concerns has been bipartisan — prominent Democrats have supported a ban and it is also a major initiative included in Project 2025. Incoming Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who wrote a chapter about the FCC in the Heritage Foundation's playbook, said banning TikTok would be a priority.
Civil liberties and tech freedom groups quickly responded to condemn Friday's ruling.
The American Civil Liberties Union called the court's decision "a major blow to freedom of expression online" and urged Trump's administration to work with Congress to "fix or repeal this flawed legislation."
“The government cannot shut down an entire communications platform unless it poses extremely serious and imminent harm, and there’s no evidence of that here," said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. "This ruling sets a flawed and dangerous precedent, one that gives the government far too much power to silence Americans’ speech online. Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and communicate with people around the world."
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights nonprofit that has received some funding from tech companies, also released a statement opposing the court's decision.
"The D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok ban will immeasurably harm the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in the U.S. and globally who use the app to create, to share information, to get their news, and promote their businesses," said Kate Ruane, an attorney and the director of the Free Expression Project. "We hope the next phase of review of this misguided and overbroad law will be a chance to right this wrong and prevent it from going into effect."
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