Christian Smith
(NewsNation) – A U.S. appeals court is scheduled to hear oral arguments this fall on challenges to a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if ByteDance, its China-based parent company, fails to divest from it.
Under a law signed by President Joe Biden In April, as part of a larger foreign aid package, ByteDance has a January 19, 2025 deadline to sell TikTok to an approved buyer.
A ban wouldn’t mean the app would be automatically removed from people’s phones. Instead, it means it would be pulled from Apple and Google’s app stores, so users wouldn’t be able to download it, get updates, security patches, or bug fixes, making it unusable over time.
What’s next in the Tiktok lawsuits?
About a month after legislation potentially banning the app was approved by the president, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit saying the move unfairly singles out the platform and is an unprecedented attack on free speech. A group of TikTok creators followed suit, writing that the law is “unconstitutionally broad” and lacks “any conceivable legitimate interest that would justify shutting down an entire media platform used by millions,” according to The Hill.
ByteDance, TikTok and creators must file legal petitions by Thursday, while the Justice Department has until July 26. A hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is scheduled for September 16.
“The government cannot prohibit a media outlet because it believes that media outlet is used to transmit foreign ‘propaganda’ or other protected content,” the creators’ lawsuit states. “The government also does not have any real, non-speculative evidence that banning TikTok in its current form improves the security of Americans’ data, or that its ban is narrowly tailored to achieve that goal.”
Meanwhile, TikTok argued that “qualified divestment” is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally” and would therefore lead to the closure of the app in the US, cutting off millions of daily users, The Hill reported.
Both TikTok and the Justice Department requested a ruling from the appeals court on December 6.
What’s next for a potential TikTok ban?
A version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives in March gave ByteDance six months to divest from TikTok, but the version ultimately signed by Biden extended that deadline to nine months. If the sale is already underway, the company has another three months to complete it, which could be postponed until April.
Those who supported the law said TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, poses a national security risk and could expose sensitive data to a foreign government. Critics of the legislation, however, said the bill unfairly targets TikTok and that national and data security threats are industry-wide, according to The Hill.
The Associated Press, Reuters and NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.
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