{"id":108558,"date":"2025-01-17T18:03:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T18:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/tiktok-ban-upheld-by-supreme-court-days-before-law-takes-effect\/"},"modified":"2025-01-17T18:03:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T18:03:35","slug":"tiktok-ban-upheld-by-supreme-court-days-before-law-takes-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/tiktok-ban-upheld-by-supreme-court-days-before-law-takes-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok ban upheld by Supreme Court days before law takes effect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jaap Arriens\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Friday\u00a0upheld a law set to ban<\/a>\u00a0social media platform TikTok in less than 48 hours.<\/p>\n

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the ruling states. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”<\/p>\n

It continues, “For the foregoing Per Curiam reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is affirmed.”<\/p>\n

The court’s ruling was unanimous, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor and conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch writing concurring opinions.<\/p>\n

In an apparent effort to limit the implications of its ruling, the court said its judgment should not be interpreted as a rebuke of common practices taken up by social media companies, such as data collection.<\/p>\n

“We emphasize the inherent narrowness of our holding,” the unsigned ruling says. “Data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age. But TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”<\/p>\n

Unless TikTok severs ties with China-based parent company ByteDance, the ban will take effect on Sunday, the day before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration on Friday said it\u00a0would not enforce the potential ban<\/a>\u00a0in the immediate aftermath of the deadline, leaving implementation of the law to Trump.<\/p>\n

“TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the ruling.<\/p>\n

“Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday,” Jean-Pierre added.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement, “The Court’s decision enables the Justice Department to prevent the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok to undermine America’s national security. Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data. The Court’s decision affirms that this Act protects the national security of the United States in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”<\/p>\n

Trump, who opposed the ban, has said he will seek to reverse it. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will attend Trump’s inauguration after receiving an invitation from the incoming administration.<\/p>\n

“The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0said he had spoken<\/a>\u00a0to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday morning with TikTok being one of the topics they discussed, according to a Truth Social post.<\/p>\n

TikTok — which boasts more than 170 million U.S. users — challenged the sale-or-ban law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that a potential ban would limit the free-expression rights of its users.<\/p>\n

Lower courts, however, found merit in security concerns about potential data collection or content manipulation undertaken by the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

Even after the ban takes effect, TikTok could remain available for U.S. users.<\/p>\n

Rather than force TikTok to take the app dark, the law targets third-party companies like cloud-service providers and app stores. TikTok could circumvent such restrictions, at least temporarily, though experts say the quality of the app would degrade over time.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jaap Arriens\/NurPhoto via Getty Images (WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Friday\u00a0upheld a law set to ban\u00a0social media platform TikTok in less than 48 hours. “There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and sourceRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,31,2],"tags":[273,271,276,274,270,123,275,133,124,272,102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}