WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has upheld the following decision: Law banning TikTok in the US The widely popular video-sharing service will face another setback in its battle with the federal government in the coming months unless its Chinese parent company sells its stake in the app.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously ruled that the law is constitutional, denying the Justice Department review of a request for relief from TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance. I supported it.
Senior Justice Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion: “We find that the portions of the Act, the provisions that Appellants have the standing to challenge, relating to TikTok and its affiliates, withstand constitutional scrutiny.” conclude,” he said. “We therefore deny the petition.”
Congress approved April foreign aid package The deal included a provision that gave US President Biden nine months to quickly sever ties with ByteDance or TikTok to lose access to its app store and web hosting services. signed the bill into lawand it is scheduled to go into effect on January 19, with a one-time 90-day delay potentially granted by the president if the sale is in progress by then.
President-elect Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office, but reversed his stance during the presidential campaign and vowed to “save” the app. He will take office on January 20th.
Lawmakers and national security officials have long suspected TikTok’s ties to China. Officials from both parties say the Chinese government is using TikTok to spy on its roughly 170 million U.S. users, collect data, and amplify or suppress certain content to keep it secret from the U.S. public. He warned that it could have negative consequences. They argue that their concerns are justified because China’s national security law requires organizations to cooperate in gathering intelligence.
The appeals court’s decision kicks off a fight at the Supreme Court over the law’s ultimate fate. Both parties asked the judge to issue a ruling by Friday to give the high court enough time to consider the case before the law takes effect. The justices can agree to hear the case and suspend the law while they consider legal arguments, or they can make the appellate court’s decision final.
Spokesman Michael Hughes said TikTok expects the law to be overturned by the Supreme Court, arguing it was based on “inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information.” .
“The Supreme Court has a historic record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and I look forward to doing the same on this important constitutional issue,” Hughes said in a statement. said.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department praised the decision.
“Today’s decision confirms that the Chinese government has weaponized TikTok to collect sensitive information about millions of Americans and secretly manipulate the content delivered to American viewers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “This is an important step in preventing this from undermining national security.” . “As the D.C. Circuit has recognized, this law protects the national security of the United States in a manner consistent with the Constitution. We are committed to protecting your data.”
court decision
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Ginsburg wrote in her opinion. “Here, the government acted solely to protect freedom from a foreign adversary and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect data about people in the United States.”
The appeals court said it recognized the decision had “significant implications” for TikTok and its users.
“As a result, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative communication media,” Ginsburg said. “That burden is due to the (People’s Republic of China’s) hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, and not the U.S. government’s fault for engaging with TikTok through a multi-year process to find alternative solutions. .”
The D.C. Circuit rules that the government’s national security justification for banning TikTok is based on the First Amendment to counter China’s efforts to collect Americans’ data and secretly manipulate content on the platform. It was found to be “completely consistent”.
“Years of work by both political branches to examine the national security risks posed by the TikTok platform and consider potential remedies proposed by TikTok lends significant weight in support of this legislation. ” Ginsburg wrote. “The government has presented convincing evidence that this law is intended to protect national security.”
Rep. John Moolener of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House China Committee, hailed the decision as a “loss for the Chinese Communist Party,” while expressing optimism about the app’s future in the United States.
“We are optimistic that President Trump will facilitate the acquisition of TikTok in the U.S. and enable its continued use in the U.S., and we look forward to welcoming the app to the U.S. under new ownership,” Moolener said in a statement. I’m looking forward to it.”
The House China Committee spearheaded a bipartisan effort to pass this legislation.
legal discussion
Application for TikTok and ByteDance legal challenge In May, it called the bill an “extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation” that would stifle the speech of millions of Americans. It was criticized as
“There is no real option,” the petition said, adding that a forced sale is “commercially, technically and legally impossible.”
The Chinese government has vowed to block the sale of TikTok’s algorithm, which recommends content tailored to each user. New buyers will need to rebuild the algorithms that run the app. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance said that “such a fundamental restructuring is simply not possible” under the restrictions in the law.
“The platform consists of millions of lines of software code, painstakingly developed over several years by thousands of engineers,” the petition says.
During oral arguments in September, the appeals panel appeared skeptical of TikTok’s argument that freedom of expression trumps national security concerns, but three judges also criticized the government’s stance. I was doing it.
TikTok’s lawyer, Andrew Pincus, said the law is “unprecedented and its effects will be staggering.”
“This law imposes an unusual ban on speech based on uncertain future risks,” Pincus said. “Despite clearly less restrictive alternatives, the government is far from satisfying scrutiny.”
Based on the TikTok rationale, Justice Shri Srinivasan said that the United States cannot prohibit foreign countries from owning major American media companies when the two countries are at war.
“What is your submission that Congress cannot prevent an enemy from owning major media sources in the United States?” Mr. Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, asked Mr. Pincus.
When Pincus pointed out that media outlets such as Politico and Business Insider are owned by foreign companies, Judge Neomi Rao, appointed by President Trump, quickly retorted, “But they are not foreign enemies.” did.
Mr. Rao also disputed Mr. Pincus’ claim that Congress has not included evidence in the bill for the claim that TikTok poses a national security risk.
“I know Congress doesn’t always legislate, but here it did,” she said. “They actually passed the law, but a lot of your arguments want us to treat them as a government agency. That’s weird. This is the first branch of our government. It’s a very strange framework to think about.”
Jeffrey Fisher, an attorney representing TikTok creators, compared the restrictions on TikTok to what the U.S. government would do if it worked with a foreign government to ban bookstores from selling books written by foreign authors.
“We are not talking about banning Tocqueville in the United States,” Rao countered. “What we’re talking about is a determination by political branches that there is a foreign adversary who may be exerting covert influence on the United States. That’s not the case at all.”
Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Reagan, expressed skepticism about the idea that the law gives special treatment to TikTok.
“It describes a category of companies that are owned or controlled by hostile forces and that puts one company in dire need,” he said, adding that companies and governments have been working together for years. He pointed out that negotiations have continued for many years, but have failed. Find solutions to national security concerns. “The company is the only company in that situation.”
Justice Department attorney Daniel Tenney said the data about Americans that can be collected through the app “could be extremely valuable to foreign adversaries seeking to access Americans as intelligence assets. ” he said. Tenney also spoke about the risks of content manipulation by China.
“The targets are foreign companies that control many aspects of this recommendation engine and the algorithms used to decide what content is shown to Americans on the app. ” Tenney said.
But Srinivasan said it’s Americans’ choice whether to use the app, regardless of what content is displayed.
“The fact that it’s denied makes this subject to intense First Amendment scrutiny,” he said.
He later added, “What gives the other side’s First Amendment argument arguable force is that the government is not only targeting curation that takes place overseas. That’s why curation done abroad is being targeted, and that’s why curation done abroad is a concern about its impact on content in the United States.
