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Get your TikTok Shop hauls in while you can.
On Friday, a federal appeals court in DC upheld the law signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year that will ban TikTok on January 19 unless the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, sells or divests its US assets.
The court cited national security concerns in its ruling and rejected the argument—made by TikTok and others—that the ban violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speech.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the main opinion. “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.”
TikTok released a statement in response to the court’s decision, saying, in part, “The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”
What now? The case will likely go to the Supreme Court as ByteDance seeks a more favorable outcome before the law goes into effect. President Biden has the ability to grant a one-time, 90-day extension on the ban timeline, but only if ByteDance shows progress in finding a buyer.
With President-elect Donald Trump set to be sworn in on January 20, one day after the ban is set to take place, there are still questions about how he and his administration might choose to act should the law go into effect. Trump previously tried to ban TikTok via executive order in 2020, but he has since said he’s against a ban—as have some of his major donors, like billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Yass. The president-elect currently has more than 14 million TikTok followers and used the platform extensively during his campaign.
There’s a possibility that Trump could instruct the Justice Department to not enforce the law or ask Congress to reverse course, but given the bipartisan support for the ban (even among some politicians who have used the platform) and divisions on the issue within Trump’s own cabinet, it’s not clear if he’d have the backing to do so. Another way Trump could intervene is by negotiating a sale with Chinese officials who are currently grappling with his proposed tariffs.
In the meantime, should today’s decision stand without intervention, “TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication,” the appeals court wrote.
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