TikTok’s emergency injunction against its U.S. ban has been denied. This means its deadline to leave the country still stands firm at Jan. 19, with the company now hoping a Supreme Court appeal will save it.
In an order filed on Friday, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals found that granting a temporary injunction to pause TikTok’s U.S. ban was “unwarranted.” It considered that doing so would not merely delay the execution of a legal ruling, but entirely suspend a law which was deliberately enacted by Congress and upheld as constitutional by the court.
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“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the order stated.
The court further noted that TikTok’s injunction request relied upon its claim that the ban violates the First Amendment right to free speech. In its petition last Monday, TikTok argued that the Supreme Court would be likely to review the ban, as “[free] speech restrictions have survived strict scrutiny only in rare and narrow circumstances.”
Unfortunately, the Court of Appeals’ judgement had already rejected TikTok’s argument, Friday’s order reiterating that it “unanimously concluded the Act satisfies the requirements of the First Amendment under heightened scrutiny.”
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Laws which restrict free speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires they be narrowly tailored to advance a compelling governmental interest. They must also be the least restrictive method to achieve the government’s goal.
“[T]he Government offers two national security justifications for the Act: to counter (1) the [People’s Republic of China]’s efforts to collect data of and about persons in the United States, and (2) the risk of the PRC covertly manipulating content on TikTok,” the Court of Appeals wrote in its judgement on Dec. 6.
“[TikTok and parent company ByteDance] suggest an array of options none of which comes close to serving either, much less both, the Government’s goals as effectively as does divestiture. Each consequently fails to qualify as a less restrictive alternative for purposes of the First Amendment.”
TikTok has consistently denied allegations of links to the Chinese government. The company has also publicly invested $1.5 billion to quarantine U.S. users’ data in the U.S. with American company Oracle, an initiative dubbed Project Texas. Even so, U.S. lawmakers remain unconvinced.
Though Friday’s decision is an undeniable setback for TikTok, the company has reiterated its intention to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court does not rule in TikTok’s favour, the only way Americans will retain access to TikTok is if ByteDance sells off its U.S. operations.
“As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech,” said TikTok in a statement on X. “The voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world will be silenced on January 19th, 2025 unless the TikTok ban is halted.”
