ByteDance and TikTok seek a temporary stay to the US ban pending Supreme Court review.

News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 10th December 2024

China-based ByteDance and its short-video app TikTok requested an appeals court on Monday to temporarily halt a statute requiring parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok by Jan. 19 or risk a ban, pending a review by the United States Supreme Court.
The companies filed an emergency motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, warning that if the order is not granted, the law will take effect and “shut down TikTok—one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms—for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration.”Without the injunction, TikTok could be outlawed in the US in six weeks, making the company significantly less valuable to ByteDance and its investors.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the rule forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok in the United States by early next year or face a six-week suspension. Lawyers for the firms stated that the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking the case “and reverse is sufficiently high to warrant the temporary pause needed to create time for further deliberation.”The firms also referenced President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to avert a ban, stating that the delay “will give the incoming administration time to determine its position — which could moot both the impending harms and the need for Supreme Court review.”

The Justice Department stated that the appeals court should immediately refuse the motion “to maximize the time available for the Supreme Court’s consideration” of ByteDance and TikTok petitions.TikTok urged the appeals court to rule on the motion by December 16. The judgment, unless reversed by the Supreme Court, leaves TikTok’s fate in the hands of President Joe Biden, who must decide whether to grant a 90-day extension of the Jan. 19 deadline to force a sale, and then of Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20. However, it is unclear whether ByteDance could fulfill the steep burden of demonstrating meaningful progress toward a divestment required to trigger the extension.

Mike Waltz, Trump’s new national security advisor, said Fox Business Network on Friday that the president “wants to save TikTok.” We obviously must provide the American people access to that app, but we must also protect our data. The ruling preserves the statute, which provides the US government broad authority to ban other foreign-owned apps that may raise concerns about the acquisition of Americans’ data. In 2020, Trump attempted to prohibit Tencent-owned (0700.HK), opens new tab WeChat, but was denied by the courts.TikTok also warned on Monday that the court decision might disrupt “services for tens of millions of TikTok users outside the United States,” According to the app, hundreds of service providers in the United States that enable maintenance, distribution, and updating will be unable to provide support for the TikTok platform starting Jan. 19.