- A federal appeals court upheld a law requiring TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a U.S. ban, citing national security concerns and denying First Amendment violations. 

- TikTok plans to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the divestment is impractical and would silence the voices of millions of American users.

- Despite the court's ruling, the future of the law is uncertain with the upcoming presidential transition, as President-elect Trump has shown a supportive stance towards TikTok.

S. ban.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit determined that the law does not infringe on the First Amendment, as TikTok has claimed.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the Government acted solely to safeguard that freedom from a foreign adversarial nation and to restrict that adversary’s capacity to collect data on individuals in the United States. For these reasons, the petitions are denied,” the court stated.

The divest-or-ban legislation progressed swiftly through Congress earlier this year in response to bipartisan national security concerns regarding the app’s parent company, ByteDance, based in China. It was signed into law by President Biden in April.

The law provides ByteDance approximately nine months—until January 19—to divest from TikTok or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores.

In a statement released on Friday, TikTok criticized the ruling and indicated that the company intends to appeal to the Supreme Court, as had been largely anticipated.

“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and advanced based on inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American public. The TikTok ban, unless halted, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here and around the globe on January 19, 2025,” the statement read.

TikTok and ByteDance initiated legal action in May to contest the law, along with several content creators, contending that divestment is virtually unfeasible. Consequently, they argue that the law effectively enforces a nationwide ban on TikTok, which they assert is unconstitutional.

However, the Biden administration has maintained that TikTok can be exploited by the Chinese government to achieve its objective of undermining American interests.

“Unless TikTok conducts a qualified divestiture by January 19, 2025—or the President authorizes a 90-day extension based on progress towards a qualified divestiture—its platform will essentially become unavailable in the United States, at least temporarily,” the court commented in its opinion on Friday.

“Therefore, TikTok’s millions of users will be compelled to seek alternative means of communication,” it further stated. “That burden is a result of the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok over a multi-year period in an attempt to find an alternative solution,” alluding to the People’s Republic of China.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the ruling on Friday, asserting that it established a “flawed and dangerous precedent.”

“The government cannot terminate an entire communications platform unless it poses extremely serious and imminent harm, and there is no evidence of that here,” the ACLU representative noted.

After initially seeking to ban TikTok during his first term, Trump has reconsidered his position, arguing that a prohibition would benefit Facebook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

During his campaign in September, the former president encouraged Americans to vote for him to “save TikTok.”

As a new Trump term potentially looms, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has reportedly reached out to tech entrepreneur and close Trump associate Elon Musk for advice regarding the impending administration, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.