Supreme Court signals it will uphold ban on TikTok over national security concerns and other takeaways from oral arguments

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a controversial ban on TikTok over concerns about its ties to China, with justices lobbing pointed questions at lawyers for the social media app and a group of its content creators.

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a controversial ban on TikTok over concerns about its ties to China, with justices lobbing pointed questions at lawyers for the social media app and a group of its content creators. During more than two hours of oral arguments, many of the justices appeared to view the sell-or-ban law approved by Congress in April not as one that primarily implicates the First Amendment but rather as an effort to regulate the potential foreign control of an app used by 170 million Americans. The law, which would restrict the app’s operations in the United States if its Chinese-based parent company ByteDance did not divest from the platform, is set to take effect on January 19 unless the high court steps in to block it temporarily. A decision on that question – the ban’s implementation date – could come quickly, long before the justices resolve any underlying questions about speech protections. Two presidents – Donald Trump and Joe Biden – have both raised concerns in the past about both content manipulation on the platform and its data collection practices. TikTok argued those concerns were speculative and resisted any suggestion that the Chinese government had a role in picking the cat videos, recipes and news that millions of Americans view on the app. Here are the key takeaways from Friday’s oral arguments: Justices across the ideological spectrum raised doubts that the TikTok ban even implicated the First Amendment. That’s a bad sign for TikTok, because to win, it had to prove first that the First Amendment applies in the case and then that the law has failed to meet its tests.