A federal appeals court upheld a law on Friday requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app popular among U.S. kids and teens or face a ban in the United States.
The ruling brings a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. another step closer to coming to fruition, as ByteDance has until January to either sell the app or have it banned, according to the legislation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit found that the sell or ban legislation does not violate the First Amendment because China is a foreign adversary that the U.S. government is seeking to limit the communist regime’s “ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States,” the court wrote, according to a report by Reuters.
“For these reasons the petitions are denied,” the court added.
The court went on to say, “Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication. That burden is attributable to the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”
ByteDance now has until January 19 to sell the popular app or face a ban in the United States — unless Joe Biden chooses to give the Chinese company a 90-day extension.
“Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by January 19, 2025 — or the President grants a 90-day extension based upon progress towards a qualified divestiture — its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” the court said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
