After a federal court last week denied TikTok’s request to delay a law that could ban the app in the United States, the company is now turning to the Supreme Court in an effort to buy time. The social media company has asked the court to temporarily block the law, currently set to take effect January 19, 2025, it said in a brief statement.
“The Supreme Court has an established record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech,” TikTok wrote in a post on X. “Today, we are asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.”
The company, which has argued that the law is unconstitutional, lost its initial legal challenge of the law earlier this month. The company then requested a delay of the law’s implementation, saying that President-elect Donal Trump had said he would “save” TikTok. That request was denied on Friday.
In its filing with the Supreme Court, TikTok again referenced Trump’s comments. “It would not be in the interest of anyone—not the parties, the public, or the courts—for the Act’s ban on TikTok to take effect only for the new Administration to halt its enforcement hours, days, or even weeks later,” it wrote. Trump’s inauguration is one day after a ban of the app would take effect.
TikTok is now hoping the Supreme Court will intervene to suspend the law in order to give the company time to make its final legal appeal. Otherwise, app stores and Internet service providers will be forced to begin blocking TikTok next month, making the app inaccessible to its 170 million US users.
Update December 16, 2024, 1:30 PM PT: Updated with details from TikTok’s court filing.
