TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Federal Court Decision

TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Federal Court Decision

A ban on TikTok in the United States is moving forward.

TikTok’s Chinese parent company faces a ban in the US if it doesn’t meet a January 19, 2024, deadline set by Congress to sell the app now as a result of a federal appeals court ruling Friday.

“A three-judge panel in Washington unanimously upheld a new US law enacted to protect national security and user privacy, ruling that it didn’t violate free speech protections under the Constitution’s First Amendment. The decision leaves the Supreme Court as the company’s last realistic hope for stopping the law from taking effect,” reports Bloomberg.

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The Wall Street Journal reports, “The sell-or-ban law—signed by President Biden in April—passed with bipartisan support after lawmakers received classified briefings from the intelligence community about China’s ability to use TikTok to surveil Americans and spread Chinese propaganda.”

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the court.

TikTok, a U.S. entity owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has claimed that American security fears are overblown.