(The Sacramento Bee)—On Jan. 19, 2025, tens of millions of Americans, including millions of Californians, will lose access to their TikTok accounts, unless the U.S. Supreme Court or President Joe Biden intervenes.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a law, signed by Biden, to ban the social media video-sharing platform TikTok — owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Inc. — from operating on American soil unless its Chinese owner sold the platform. President-Elect Donald Trump has criticized the ban, and said that he will save the platform when he takes office Jan. 20.
Federal lawmakers called the platform a national security risk, though to date no evidence has been publicly provided that the People’s Republic of China has used it to spy on Americans.
Still, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was sympathetic to that argument in its Friday ruling shutting down the lawsuit that sought to overturn the law on First Amendment grounds.
A copy of the ruling can be read here.
The court noted that unless the president grants a 90-day extension based on progress toward divestiture, the platform will become unavailable next month.
“Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication. That burden is attributable to the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution,” the court noted in its conclusion.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. 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,” it said.
The response to the decision was swift and scathing.
TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes, in a statement to The Bee, said that the company will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” Hughes said. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”
Hughes said that unless the ban is stopped, it will “silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the U.S. and around the world.”
That includes an estimated 16 million Californians who use the platform.
Organizations dedicated to free speech roundly condemned the court ruling.
“This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans’ access to information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Knight First Amendment Institute Executive Director Jameel Jaffer in a statement. “We hope that the appeals court’s ruling won’t be the last word.”
Jacob Huebert, of the libertarian-leaning Liberty Justice Center, which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that “This law threatens the free speech rights of our client and millions of other Americans who use TikTok to share and hear political ideas. To protect their rights, we’ll ask the court to stay its decision until we seek Supreme Court review and receive a final decision.”
The ban may have a major impact on business operations as well.
An estimated 890,000 businesses in California use TikTok to promote themselves, according to data from the platform.
“If the Trump administration throws its support behind the TikTok ban, businesses, marketers, and users could face significant disruptions. With platforms like TikTok and Instagram now surpassing Google as the top search destinations for Gen Z, as highlighted by SOCi’s Consumer Behavior Index (CBI), marketers would lose a key channel for engaging younger audiences,” said Damian Rollison of the San Diego-based software company SOCi, in a statement.
Rollison added that small businesses relying on TikTok’s format to promote their products “would need to quickly pivot to alternatives like Instagram or YouTube Shorts.”
“Established brands may also feel the impact, losing an essential platform for reaching younger consumers and potentially affecting long-term brand perception and market share. However, if the Trump administration finds a way to dismantle the ban, concerns around data privacy and national security may be reignited, possibly leading to new regulatory challenges for businesses to navigate,” he said.