
The US Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling, refused to save a platform that is used by about half of all Americans, upholding on Friday a statute that will prohibit TikTok in the US on national security grounds if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell the short-video app by Sunday.
The court decided that the measure, which was signed by Democratic President Joe Biden and passed by Congress last year with a resounding bipartisan majority, did not infringe upon the First Amendment’s guarantee against governmental interference with free speech. After the law was contested by TikTok, ByteDance, and a few app users, the judges upheld a lower court’s ruling that had supported it.
Without a doubt, TikTok provides a unique and wide-ranging platform for expression, interaction, and community building for over 170 million Americans. However, the court stated in the unsigned ruling that Congress has decided that divestment is required to resolve its well-founded national security concerns about TikTok’s data gathering tactics and relationship with a foreign opponent. According to a White House statement, Biden, in the final days of his administration, would not do anything to salvage TikTok before the law’s divestiture deadline on Sunday. Biden is replaced on Monday by Republican Donald Trump, who resisted a TikTok ban.
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