Federal Appeals Court Upholds TikTok Divest-or-Ban Law: ByteDance Faces January 19, 2025 Deadline
On December 6, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington ruled in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, No. 24-1113, with a three-judge panel unanimously denying TikTok's petitions and upholding the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The Act, passed by Congress with bipartisan support and signed by President Biden in April 2024, requires ByteDance to complete a qualified divestiture of TikTok's U.S. operations by January 19, 2025, or the TikTok platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States; the President may grant a one-time 90-day extension if a divestiture is in progress.
Senior Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote the opinion, joined by Circuit Judge Neomi Rao; Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote a separate concurrence. The court assumed without deciding that strict scrutiny applied and held that the Act survived even that standard: the government's two national security justifications — countering China's efforts to collect data of and about persons in the United States, and countering the risk of China covertly manipulating content on TikTok — were each independently compelling national security interests, and the Act was the least restrictive means of advancing them.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States," the court wrote. "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 also rejected TikTok's remaining equal protection, bill of attainder, and takings challenges, and found the national security agreement TikTok had proposed to be an inadequate alternative. The court acknowledged the decision has significant implications for TikTok and its users and that, without a divestiture, the platform would be unavailable in the United States at least for a time starting January 19, 2025.
TikTok and ByteDance said they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Source: U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit)
Source: U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于美国华盛顿的 E. Barrett Prettyman 联邦法院大楼，美国哥伦比亚特区巡回上诉法院所在地。Toohool 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. By Toohool, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
