TikTok Is Facing A Skeptical Ruling

The fate of TikTok in the United States remain uncertain after a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals were unconvinced last 16 September that the spcial media platform "sale or ban" law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was unconstitutional.

The law, which would have gone into effect no earlier than this January, is effectively on pause while TikTok’s legal challenge works its way through the courts.

After several hours of questioning, it was difficult to ascertain which way the court is leaning in the high-stakes legal saga that is the most dire-yet challenge TikTok has faced.

A panel of three judges appeared dubious of TikTok’s plea that free expression surpasses the national security concerns of Washington. That’s because TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in China, an adversary of the United States.

At the same time, the judges also pointed out that millions of American TikTok users, and TikTok’s U.S. operations, do have First Amendment protections and the government shutting down the app could violate those rights.

In April, President Biden signed a law giving TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, 90 days to find a non-Chinese buyer or be banned nationwide.

Court documents in TikTok’s lawsuit show that the Biden administration nearly reached a deal to resolve the issues. A national security agreement between the U.S. and TikTok was drawn up, and executives at the tech company were hopeful its efforts would alloy lawmakers’ fears.

Before the deal could be finalized, however, a number of China hawks in the White House intervened with an ultimatum: Sell the app to a non-Chinese company or group of outside investors, or be banned in the U.S.

If banned, Apple and Google would be forced by law to remove TikTok from the app stores, making it impossible for TikTok to send software updates to the app, eventually rendering it inoperable. Under the law, doing business with TikTok would become a federal crime.

In 2022, TikTok launched an initiative called Project Texas to demonstrate its commitment to safeguarding U.S. user data and governance transparency. It includes having Oracle, a U.S. software company, isolate TikTok’s services in the U.S. within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment.

In December 2022, Forbes reported that ByteDance employees used TikTok to monitor its journalists’ locations in an effort to discover which employees were leaking confidential materials. TikTok and ByteDance have since condemned the practice and said that three employees involved were terminated, with an additional employee resigning.