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The U.S. Supreme Court said on Wednesday it would hear arguments in TikTok’s challenge to a law that threatens to ban the app from millions of users in the United States.
In an order, justices said they would hear arguments in the case on January 10 – just nine days before the law is set to take effect.
TikTok and the government will be presenting arguments on whether or not the bipartisan law, Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, violates the First Amendment by forcing TikTok to sell to a U.S.-based company or be banned.
The law, passed in April, was part of a foreign aid package and generated congressional support over fears that TikTok, owned by the Chinese-based company ByteDance, was storing Americans’ data for surveillance reasons.
ByteDance had nine months to sell off TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps, or lose access to U.S. app stores and web-hosting services on January 19.
For months, TikTok has been trying to fight the law in federal courts, arguing it will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms” and thus create a chilling effect.
After a failed attempt to get a federal appeals court to intervene, TikTok asked the Supreme Court to rule on the matter on Monday.
Justices reviewed the request and chose to take up the case in just two days. By setting oral arguments for less than a month from now, the court has indicated intervening on the matter is critical and requires swift action.
That stands in juxtaposition to the court’s timeline on President-elect Donald Trump’s request for sweeping criminal immunity in his federal election interference case this past term. It took the court 17 days to agree to hear Trump’s case, another two months to hear oral arguments and then a little over two months to make a precedent-setting decision.
This is a breaking news story, more follows…
