The Supreme Court has sided with the Biden Administration on a law that could ban TikTok in the coming days. In a unanimous ruling, the court upheld the law.
The ruling marks the end of TikTok’s many legal challenges to a law, passed last spring, that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States. It comes amid mounting tensions between the US and China, and just days after the Biden Administration moved to restrict the export of GPUs used for AI applications.
TikTok’s future, however, remains somewhat uncertain. White House officials said Thursday that the Biden Administration would not enforce the ban on President Joe Biden’s last day in office. The company said in a legal filing in December that it would be forced to shut down in the US unless the courts intervened. Incoming President Donald Trump, who will be sworn in one day after the ban is supposed to take effect, has suggested he wants to “save” the app. That’s caused some speculation that he could instruct the Justice Department not to enforce the law or find some other arrangement that would allow the app to remain accessible.
TikTok users have been vocally opposed to the ban. Before the law was passed, legions of fans called their Congressional representatives’ offices, urging them to not support the bill. The move may have had unintended consequences as some members of Congress accused TikTok, which had encouraged users to make the calls, of “interfering with the legislative process.” More recently, TikTok fans have pushed a number of previously unknown apps, including a Chinese social media app known as “RedNote” or Xiaohongshu, to the top of the app stores as they search for alternatives.
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