The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up a legal challenge filed by short form video platform TikTok over a recently-enacted law that effectively bans the service from U.S.-based app stores.
The law, passed earlier this year, requires TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest its stateside business or face the expulsion from app stores run by Apple, Google, Amazon and others.
Federal lawmakers cited unspecified security concerns over the way ByteDance and TikTok collect and share the data of its users, with some officials claiming without evidence that the data ultimately falls into the hands of the Chinese government.
ByteDance has refuted the notion, but did affirm that the Chinese government would not allow the company to divest part of its business, even if forced under color of law to do so.
The ban was rolled into a federal spending bill earlier this year, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden. ByteDance filed a legal challenge shortly thereafter, claiming the bill violates the First Amendment protections of the company and its users, among other things.
Lower courts have rejected ByteDance’s request for an injunction, which would have prevented the law from taking place in January while the case was being heard. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments on the matter of the injunction in early January. The hearing will cover only the injunction, and not the case as a whole.
The decision by the Supreme Court does not automatically stay the law, meaning it will still take effect in mid-January absent any action by the court.
