The Supreme Court has sided with the Biden Administration on a law that could ban TikTok in the coming days. By unanimous decision, the court kept the lawwriting in an unsigned opinion that “TikTok's scale and susceptibility to control by foreign adversaries, along with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government's national security concerns.”
The ruling marks the end of TikTok's numerous legal challenges to a law, passed last spring, that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States. It comes amid rising tensions between the US and China, and just days after the Biden Administration took steps to restrict the export of GPUs used for artificial intelligence applications.
in a statementTikTok said that “unless the Biden Administration…provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers by ensuring non-enforcement” immediately, it will unfortunately be forced to cease operations on January 19. “The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have not provided the necessary clarity and assurance to service providers who are essential to keeping TikTok available to more than 170 million Americans,” he said.
White House officials said Thursday that the Biden Administration would not enforce the ban on President Joe Biden's last day in office. Incoming President Donald Trump, who will be sworn in a day after the ban takes effect, has suggested he wants to “save” the app. That has caused some speculation that he could order the Justice Department not to enforce the law or find any another arrangement that would allow the application to remain accessible.
“The Supreme Court's decision was expected and everyone must respect it,” Trump wrote in a publication about social truth. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not-too-distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.” He also said who had discussed TikTok with China's Xi Jinping on Friday, but did not provide details. At the beginning of the week, Washington Post reported that Trump was considering<a target="_blank" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:10;pos:1" class="link " href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/15/trump-tiktok-ban-executive-order/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:an executive order;elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:10;pos:1;itc:0;sec:content-canvas”> an executive order that would give TikTok an additional “60 or 90 days” to comply with the law. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump's inauguration, where he will sit next Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
In a brief statement shared on tiktokChew thanked Trump but did not say whether the app would be disabled this weekend when the ban takes effect. “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to working with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” he said. “This is a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.” Representatives for TikTok, Google, Apple and Oracle (which hosts TikTok data in the US) have not responded to questions about their plans to comply with the law.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding TikTok's future. “Even what might happen after TikTok remains unclear,” he wrote. “All I can say is that, at this time and under these limitations, the problem seems real and the response is not unconstitutional.”
Free speech groups have denounced the law and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it. “The Supreme Court's ruling is incredibly disappointing as it allows the government to shut down an entire platform and the free speech rights of so many people based on fear and speculation,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the Justice Project, said in a statement. ACLU Homeland Security. . “By refusing to block this ban, the Supreme Court is giving the executive branch unprecedented power to silence speech it doesn't like, increasing the danger that sweeping invocations of 'national security' will trump our constitutional rights.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said in a statement that “banning or force-selling a social media app will do virtually nothing to protect Americans' data privacy; only comprehensive consumer privacy legislation can achieve that goal.”
TikTok users have also openly opposed the ban. Before the law was passed, legions of fanatics called the offices of their congressional representatives, urging them not to support the bill. The move may have had unintended consequences, as some members of Congress accused TikTok, which had encouraged users to make calls, of “interfering with the legislative process.” More recently, TikTok fans have pushed a number of previously unknown apps, including a Chinese social media app known as “RedNote” or Xiaohongshu, to the top of the app stores as they look for alternatives.
Update, January 17, 2025 at 9:45 am PT: This post has been updated to add details of a statement made by Shou Chew.
Update, January 17, 2025, 10 pm ET: Added TikTok statement.
