US Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban

WASHINGTON — The United States Supreme Court upheld on Friday a law banning TikTok in the US on national security grounds if its Chinese parent company Byte-Dance does not sell the short-video app by Sunday, as the justices in a 9-0 decision declined to rescue the platform, Reuters reported.

The justices ruled that the law, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress last year and signed by US President Joe Biden, did not violate the US Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgment of free speech. The justices affirmed a lower court's decision that had upheld the measure.

Biden will not enforce the ban on TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a US official said on Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.

Congress last year, in a law signed by Biden, required that ByteDance divest the company by Sunday, a day before the presidential inauguration. The official said the outgoing administration was leaving the implementation of the law — and the potential enforcement of the ban — to Trump.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Biden administration thinking.

Trump, who once called for a ban on the app, has since pledged to keep it available in the US, though his transition team has not said how they intend to accomplish that.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump's inauguration and be granted a prime seating location on the dais as the president-elect's national security adviser signals that the incoming administration may take steps to "keep TikTok from going dark".

Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Fox & Friends on Thursday that the federal law that could ban TikTok by Sunday also "allows for an extension as long as a viable deal is on the table".

Call for extension

The push to save TikTok, much like the move to ban it in the US, has crossed partisan lines. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.

TikTok's CEO is expected to be seated on the dais for the inauguration along with tech billionaires Elon Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Open-AI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to two people with the matter.

Agencies Via Xinhua