Washington — The Supreme Court said Thursday it could issue opinions Friday morning, a last-minute addition to the schedule that comes just two days before a law banning TikTok takes effect.
“The Court may announce its opinions on the home page from 10 a.m.,” says a notice posted on the Court’s website, without specifying which case or cases might be decided. “The Court will not sit.”
The law would cut TikTok off from U.S. app stores and hosting services if the company does not sever ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, by a Jan. 19 deadline.
The Supreme Court seemed likely to download the law when it heard arguments following TikTok’s legal challenge last week, with judges appearing to favor the government’s claims that China could use TikTok to collect a large amount of data on its U.S. users and spy on them.
Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance, said the potential Supreme Court ruling was “extremely far-reaching” for the platform’s 170 million users in the United States and their right to privacy. freedom of expression.
If the law is not suspended or rescinded by Sunday, “we are going dark,” Francisco said last week. “The platform is shutting down,” he said, later clarifying that TikTok would no longer be available in US app stores.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the “unprecedented amounts” of personal data collected by TikTok would give the Chinese government “a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment and espionage.” She cited several data breaches that the United States has attributed to China over the past decade, including the hack of the Office of Personnel Management that compromised the personal information of millions of federal employees.
“For years, the Chinese government has sought to build detailed profiles on Americans, where we live and work, who our friends and colleagues are, what our interests are, and what our vices are,” Pregolar said.
In April, Congress quickly passed the bipartisan legislation, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as part of a foreign aid package, and it was signed into law by President Biden. He gave TikTok nine months to sever ties with its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, with the possibility of a 90-day extension if a sale was pending before the January deadline. Without a sale, TikTok loses access to app stores and web hosting services in the United States
The law would take effect one day before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. Trump, who attempted to ban the app during his first term over national security concerns, has since said he wanted to “save” the app and took credit for it. helping him win over more young voters.
“We will put measures in place to prevent TikTok from going dark,” Trump’s new national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said Thursday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “It’s been a great platform for him and his campaign.”
Some lawmakers are also calling for a delay in implementing the law. Two Democratic senators said Thursday they had sent a letter to Mr. Biden urging him to trigger a provision in the measure to delay it for another 90 days, although no apparent sale is being made.
“It’s time to take a breath, to try to take a step back, to buy some time, to try to understand this in a rational way. But under no circumstances should we let TikTok go under,” the Democratic senator said Thursday Ed Markey of Massachusetts. “It would be catastrophic with so many small businesses, so many creators, so many communities created with no alternative available.”
Lawmakers and intelligence agencies have long suspected the app’s ties to China and have argued that such concerns are justified because China’s national security laws require organizations to cooperate in intelligence collection.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge in May, who called the law an “extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation” that would suppress the speech of millions of Americans.
A federal appeals court issued a ruling in December upholding the law, saying the U.S. government “acted solely to protect this freedom against a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect data on individuals to UNITED STATES”. A week later, the court of appeal denied TikTok’s attempt to delay the law’s entry into force, pending review by the Supreme Court.
December 16, TikTok request The Supreme Court called for a temporary pause, saying it would suffer “immediate irreparable harm” if the High Court did not delay the ban. Two days later, the Supreme Court said it would take up the challenge to the law in an expedited manner.
contributed to this report.
