On December 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a decision rejecting constitutional challenges to the federal law enacted in April that would effectively ban the TikTok social media platform effective January 19, 2025—the day before the inauguration.
“This law threatens the free-speech rights of our client and millions of other Americans who use TikTok to share and hear political ideas,” said Jacob Huebert, President of the Liberty Justice Center. “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 Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit to challenge the TikTok ban in June, on behalf of BASED Politics, Inc., a nonprofit organization that uses TikTok to share ideas about individual liberty and free markets with the platform’s “Gen Z” audience. The lawsuit argues that the federal statute violates the First Amendment by banning all speech on TikTok—even though much or all of that speech is constitutionally protected. The lawsuit also argues that lawmakers’ purported justifications for the ban—national security and protecting Americans from propaganda—cannot justify such an infringement on TikTok users’ First Amendment rights, particularly because there is no evidence that TikTok threatens national security or that a complete ban is necessary to address whatever threat it might pose. In addition, the lawsuit argues that the ban must be struck down because legislators made clear that they enacted it to suppress speech of which they disapprove.
The Liberty Justice Center’s lawsuit was combined with two other challenges to the ban—one filed by a group of TikTok content creators and one by TikTok Inc. and its parent company ByteDance—for oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The combined legal challenge saw a national groundswell of support as organizations across the political spectrum filed “friend of the court” briefs that urged the Court to enjoin the ban.
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.