On December 18, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order announcing that it will take up the Liberty Justice Center’s constitutional challenge to the proposed federal TikTok ban. The Court will hear oral arguments on January 10, 2025.
The TikTok ban is currently scheduled to take effect on January 19, 2025, the day before the presidential inauguration.
The Liberty Justice Center, which filed a First Amendment challenge to the ban in June, praised the Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari and emphasized the impact that the Court’s anticipated ruling will have on the free speech rights of millions of Americans, including its client BASED Politics, Inc.
“It’s encouraging that the Supreme Court acted so quickly to take up this case, and that the Court will hear arguments before the TikTok ban can take effect on January 19,” said Jacob Huebert, President of the Liberty Justice Center. “This law would suppress Americans’ speech on an unprecedented scale, and we’re hopeful that the Court will issue an order to stop that from ever happening.”
On Monday, the Liberty Justice Center and a group of TikTok creators jointly filed an emergency petition urging the Supreme Court to take up their case on appeal and issue an injunction preventing the ban from taking effect on January 19, 2025. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance also filed an emergency petition urging the Court to grant certiorari.
In today’s order, the Supreme Court granted both petitions. The order defers the requests for an injunction to block the ban until after oral arguments take place on January 10.
The petitioners challenging the TikTok ban and the Department of Justice will file their opening briefs on Friday, December 27, 2024. The parties will have until January 3 to file reply briefs. The Court will then hear oral arguments in Washington, D.C., on January 10.
BASED Politics Inc. v. Garland was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on June 6, 2024.
The Liberty Justice Center’s legal filings in BASED Politics Inc. v. Garland are available here.