TikTok could be out of the U.S. this next January

TikTok faces a hard deadline in January. A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld the initial order forcing the social network TikTok to sever all ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, by January 2025, because “this relationship poses a threat to national security and the security of Americans, whose data could end up in the hands of the Asian powerhouse without permission.

The three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia District have disregarded TikTok's request to appeal the matter by insisting that the initial order against the platform—translated into a law signed in April by U.S. President Joe Biden and endorsed by the U.S. Congress—“withstands constitutional scrutiny.”

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Justice Douglas Ginsburg has made known in expressing the court's majority opinion on this order. “The Government has acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to collect data on persons in the United States,” adds the brief in a decision that will almost certainly take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

TikTok bets on the Supreme Court

If TikTok decides to appeal to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country will have to rule before the order goes into effect on January 19. If it decides to hear the case, the order will be suspended until a final decision. A statement published by the company on its website immediately after the rejection of its appeal confirms that TikTok intends to present its case before the Supreme Court, “a court with a proven track record of protecting Americans' right to free speech".

“We hope it will do the same in this important constitutional matter. Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed based on inaccurate, faulty, and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of more than 170 million Americans here in the U.S. and around the world on January 19, 2025,” TikTok denounces in that statement.

According to The New York Times, civil penalties would be imposed on app stores that distribute or update TikTok, such as Apple's and Google's. The app is already on millions of phones in the United States, but restricting updates will likely undermine users' ability to access it. This would be complemented by a measure prohibiting web hosting companies from helping distribute the app.