The Supreme Court unanimously upholds the law that orders TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, to sell the app, or else it’s banned in America.
ByteDance appealed the law, but SCOTUS rejected arguments the law violates the First Amendment.
SCOTUS acknowledged that the TikTok law “is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny.”
“Those differences—the Act’s focus on a foreign government, the congressionally determined adversary relationship between that foreign government and the United States, and the causal steps between the regulations and the alleged burden on protected speech—may impact whether First Amendment scrutiny applies,” the Court explained.
Well, SCOTUS concluded the First Amendment does not apply since ByteDance is a foreign company and it has the responsibility of the app and the law does not target speech (I deleted the citations):
The challenged provisions are facially content neutral. They impose TikTok-specific prohibitions due to a foreign adversary’s control over the platform and make divestiture a prerequisite for the platform’s continued operation in the United States. They do not target particular speech based upon its content, contrast, e.g., Carey v. Brown, or regulate speech based on its function or purpose, contrast, e.g., Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. Nor do they impose a “restriction, penalty, or burden” by reason of content on TikTok—a conclusion confirmed by the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech. As to petitioners, the Act thus does not facially regulate “particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.”
The ban goes into effect on Sunday, January 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the Court wrote. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, naming TikTok and ByteDance. The act “made it functionally illegal for ‘a foreign adversary controlled application’ to operate within the United States, or for any other entity to provide ‘internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating’ of the app.”
The law targets all companies where “a citizen of an adversarial nation ‘directly or indirectly own[s] at least a 20 percent stake.’”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a law that requires the sale or ban of TikTok in America, narrowing it down to national security.
Well, the government used what it hand on the books to ban it because ByteDance is a Chinese company:
ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, which is developed and maintained in China. The company is also responsible for developing portions of the source code that runs the TikTok platform. ByteDance Ltd. is subject to Chinese laws that require it to “assist or cooperate” with the Chinese Government’s “intelligence work” and to ensure that the Chinese Government has “the power to access and control private data” the company holds.
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