In a major blow to TikTok, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that the popular short-video app – used by over 170 million Americans daily – can be banned in the US as soon as January 19 unless it secures a non-Chinese buyer.
The three-judge panel unanimously sided with a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, which mandates that TikTok – owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance – must find an American purchaser by the deadline or be removed from US app stores and web-hosting services.
“We conclude the portions of the act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the opinion.
“We therefore deny the petitions,” he added.
Citing national security concerns that Beijing could pressure ByteDance to alter its algorithm and collect personal data in ways that could harm US interests – a claim TikTok has consistently denied – earlier this year Congress passed, and Biden signed, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
TikTok and two other petitioners challenged the law – filing their suit directly to the circuit court, which handles such reviews – arguing that it violated the First Amendment rights of the app’s users. TikTok also contended that divesting from ByteDance was “technologically, commercially and legally impossible”.
