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A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or face an effective ban in the United States.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., rejected TikTok’s argument that the ban, signed into law by President Joe Biden in April, is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans that use the popular social media service.
If ByteDance fails to sell TikTok by Jan. 19, the law would require app store companies, like Apple and Google, and internet hosting providers to stop supporting TikTok, effectively banning the app.
The court in its majority opinion found that the U.S. government had “offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that” the divestment law “is narrowly tailored to protect national security.”
And that opinion noted that TikTok “never squarely denies that it has ever manipulated content at the direction of the” People’s Republic of China.
Lawmakers from both parties have cited concerns about national security issues related to TikTok’s alleged connections to the Chinese government as a reason to ban the app.
“On the merits, we reject each of the petitioners’ constitutional claims,” appeals court Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the opinion explaining the ruling.
“As we shall explain, the parts of the Act that are properly before this court do not contravene the First
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, nor do they violate the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws; constitute an unlawful bill of attainder … or work an uncompensated taking of
private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” the opinion said.
“The Act was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC,” the opinion said.
Rep. Troy Balderson, R-Ohio, in March called TikTok “a surveillance tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Americans and harvest highly personal data.”
President-elect Donald Trump has not yet said whether his administration will enforce the ban when he takes office next month.
In a September post on Truth Social, Trump said he wasn’t “doing anything with TikTok, but the other side is going to close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump.”
Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CNBC in November that the president-elect “will deliver” on his campaign promises.
TikTok and ByteDance can ask that their appeal be reconsidered by the full lineup of judges in the D.C. federal circuit, but such requests are often rejected.
The company can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but there is no automatic right of appeal to that court.
A source close to the company told NBC News that it will seek an injunction pending a planned petition to have the Supreme Court take the case.
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