WASHINGTON – TikTok asked the Supreme Court on Monday to step in on an emergency basis to block the federal law that would ban the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance urged the justices to step in before the law’s Jan. 19 deadline. A similar plea was filed by content creators who rely on the platform for income, and some of TikTok’s more than 170 million users are in the U.S.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then pledged during the campaign to “save TikTok,” said his administration would look at the situation.
Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club on Monday, hours after the president-elect suggested he might reverse course on the impending ban on the social media app in the US. “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said on Monday. (Trump lost 18-29-year-old voters to Vice President Kamala Harris by 11 points, according to CNN’s 2024 exit polls.)
Nevertheless, the platform could be banned in the US on January 19 unless it can convince Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell it to a new, non-Chinese owner. Attorneys for TikTok are now asking the Supreme Court to block the ban temporarily.
The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
The case could attract the court’s interest because it pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.
The request first goes to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from courts in the nation’s capital. He almost certainly will seek input from all nine justices.
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