Supreme Court Approves TikTok Ban

The Supreme Court released on Friday its ruling on the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, popularly known as the TikTok ban. In a per curiam decision, the court ruled that the ban was not a violation of the First Amendment, which would require TikTok parent company ByteDance Ltd. to divest from the social media platform or cease operations in the United States.

In the opinion, the court said that “TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”

The ban will officially go into effect on Sunday, January 19, prohibiting the social media platform from operating in the U.S. until ByteDance has divested from it. The president does have the authority to provide an additional grace period of 90 days if the parent company demonstrates that it has made significant progress on divestment, but the Chinese parent company has indicated that it currently has no intention of selling off TikTok.

Joe Biden has declined to enforce the ban during his final days in office, a spokesman citing the fact that it takes effect over a holiday weekend before the inauguration. That will leave the final enforcement of the ban to the incoming Trump administration. Donald Trump, although supportive of a TikTok ban in the past, promised to “save TikTok” during his campaign. “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?” he posted on Truth Social earlier this month, with a graphic displaying his campaign’s extensive reach on the platform.