September 16, 2024
TikTok was fighting for its life in a federal appeals court this morning as they were trying desperately to stop the looming TikTok ban.
So – how did it go?
Well — we don’t officially know because the three-judge appeals court panel in Washington DC did not issue a ruling today – but what they did do was ask a ton of questions. The lawyer for TikTok, the lawyer for the 8 us-based TikTok creators and the lawyer for the US government were all tasked with answering those questions. The judges seemed sort of skeptical of some of the government’s positions but really skeptical of TikTok’s positions.
While the lawyers for TikTok and the creators were trying to focus on what they call the “specific targeting” of one US based company by congress through this ban and the major first amendment violations they say the ban poses to the company and the 170 million American users – the judges were more interested in TikTok’s parent company Bytedance – which of course is based in China.
Despite having a Chinese parent company, the lawyer for the 8 US based creators pushed back arguing even that isn’t enough to justify this ban. He cited long standing supreme court precedence from a 1965 case that says even speech deemed to be foreign propaganda is still protected by the first amendment in the United States.
On the flip side the government argued – the first amendment rights of TikTok and the 170 million American users are almost irrelevant becuase the national security concern is much bigger.
The government’s lawyer continued that TikTok is not being transparent about the reality of China’s ability to control the algorithm.
In several briefs – TikTok and the creators argued – the government didn’t give any specific evidence of why TikTok is such a national security threat and instead submitted pages and pages of redacted or what TikTok says was “secret” information. To which one of the judge’s said so????
There’s no way to know which way these judges are going to rule or when they’re going to rule. But the fact is this – under the law TikTok will be banned in the United States on January 19th. What we do know for sure is – whoever loses this case will appeal to the u-s supreme court – but whether the justices take the case before the ban is enforced is unclear.
Listen to the oral argument here.
