The Supreme Court ruled that Tiktok be banned by Sunday, January 19.
Supreme Court’s unanimous decision
In a unanimous 9-0 decision on Friday, January 17, 2025, the United States Supreme Court ruled to leave in place a federal law that requires TikTok to be banned unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, divests its US operations by Sunday, January 19. The Court explained that the national security concerns of ByteDance’s links with China outweigh those that exist over the limiting of free speech by the app to its 170 million American users.
The opinion of the Court read, in part, “Congress has decided that divestiture is a necessary means of dispelling its well-documented national security concerns about TikTok’s practices regarding the collection of data and its connection to a foreign adversary.” The justices also decided that the law “does not infringe the First Amendment rights of petitioners.”
Political reactions and administrative stance
The ruling comes as politics are shifting. President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to settle, and the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden has given indications it won’t impose the ban, leaving this up to the next administration. “TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
However, 14.7 million-strong-on-TikTok President-elect Trump now faces a fight against leading Senate Republicans who argue that ByteDance has failed to find a buyer within the time frame. On Sunday, Trump told Truth Social, “I brought up TikTok with the leader of China. Apparently, there’s possible diplomatic outreach in a recent post on his platform.”
Technology industry and changing market dynamics
The ban puts big-tech giants like Google and Apple in an especially tight bind. TikTok is under a requirement that the apps must remove it from online stores or face fines of up to thousands in amount. According to analysts, all competitors, including Meta Platforms and Snap, would get helped by the exclusion of TikTok from the US market. Following the Supreme Court decision, there was a very slight uptick of Meta’s stocks and a reduction of Snap’s ones.
Response from TikTok and its future operations
TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is said to be joining the inauguration of President-elect Trump, showing signals that the company seeks a solution. In a note recently written to the users, Chew thanked the incoming president for seeking a resolution to keep TikTok available in the United States.
Without a sale to an approved buyer, by law, app stores run by Apple, Google and others will no longer be allowed to offer TikTok starting Sunday, unless a sale to an approved buyer is finalized. Additionally, internet hosting services won’t be allowed to host TikTok, which would eventually make the app unusable over time.
Legal and National security considerations
The Supreme Court’s ruling reflects how First Amendment rights entwine with national security concerns in today’s digitized world. There was a semblance of acknowledgment on the part of the justices regarding the difficulty in charting this new landscape, particularly when there has been so little guidance. “Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was persuaded by the argument that China could get access to “vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”
Digital rights groups have criticized the ruling, and Kate Ruane, a director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which has supported TikTok’s challenge to the federal law said: “Today’s unprecedented decision upholding the TikTok ban harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world.”
Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the effect on their business if TikTok shuts down. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner mechanic shop in Conyers, Georgia. “And very scared about the decrease that I’m going to have in reaching customers and worried I’m going to potentially lose my business in the next six months.”
