A White House statement suggested that Biden would not take action to save TikTok before the law’s Sunday deadline for divestiture. Republican Donald Trump, who opposed a TikTok ban, succeeds Biden on Monday. Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed issues, including TikTok, in a phone call on Friday.
The case pitted free speech rights against national security concerns in the age of social media.
The court’s unanimity underscored the justices’ acceptance of the national security risks Biden’s administration warned about regarding TikTok, blunting apprehensions about free speech infringements.
“TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the government’s national security concerns,” the court said.
White House Press Secretary KarinJean-Pierre, in a statement, reiterated Biden’s position that “TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law.”
Given the timing, Jean-Pierre added, action to implement the law “must fall to the next administration.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday, among other high-profile invitees. However, unless a last-minute reprieve is granted, the company plans to shut its U.S. app operations on Sunday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Trump’s team and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Without Biden’s decision to formally invoke a 90-day delay in the deadline, companies providing services to TikTok or hosting the app could face legal liability. It is not immediately clear if TikTok’s business partners, including Google, Apple, and Oracle, will continue doing business with it before Trump is inaugurated. The uncertainty leaves open the possibility of a shutdown by TikTok on Sunday.
TikTok Ban: Quick action
The Supreme Court acted quickly in the case, holding arguments on Jan. 10, just nine days before the deadline set by law.
TikTok is one of the most prominent social media platforms in the United States, used by about 170 million Americans, including many young people. TikTok’s powerful algorithm, its main asset, feeds individual users short videos tailored to their liking. The platform presents a vast collection of user-submitted videos, often under a minute, that can be viewed with a smartphone app or on the internet.
China and the United States are economic and geopolitical rivals, and TikTok’s Chinese ownership has raised concerns among American leaders for years. The TikTok fight unfolded during the waning days of Biden’s presidency, a time of rising trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
The Biden administration has said the law targets the app’s control by a foreign adversary, not protected speech, and that TikTok could continue operating as-is if it is freed from China’s control.
During the case’s arguments, Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Prelogar said Chinese government control of TikTok poses a “grave threat” to U.S. national security. China seeks to amass vast quantities of sensitive data on Americans and engage in covert influence operations. Prelogar said China compels companies like ByteDance to secretly turn over data on social media users and carry out Chinese government directives.
TikTok’s immense data set, Prelogar added, represents a powerful tool that the Chinese government could use for harassment, recruitment and espionage, and that China “could weaponise TikTok at any time to harm the United States.”
The law was passed last April, and Biden’s administration defended it in court. However, TikTok, ByteDance, and some users who post content on the app challenged the measure and appealed to the Supreme Court after losing on Dec. 6 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Trump’s opposition to the ban represents a reversal from his first term in office when he aimed to prohibit TikTok. Trump has said he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” and he has commented that the app helped him with young voters in the 2024 election.
In December, Trump asked the Supreme Court to hold the law to give his incoming administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.” While Trump vowed to “save” TikTok, many Republican allies supported the ban.
On Thursday, Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, said the new administration would keep TikTok alive in the United States if a viable deal existed. Waltz said the incoming administration would “put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” and cited a provision in the law allowing for a 90-day extension if there is “significant progress” toward a divestiture.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that TikTok should be given more time to find an American buyer and that he would work with the Trump administration “to keep TikTok alive while protecting our national security.”
Free speech rights
TikTok has said the law endangers the First Amendment rights not only of it and its users but also of all Americans. TikTok said the ban would hit its user base, advertisers, content creators and employee talent. TikTok has 7,000 U.S. employees.
Noel Francisco, the lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance, told the Supreme Court that the app is “one of America’s most popular speech platforms” and said that the law would require it to “go dark” unless ByteDance executes a qualified divestiture.
Francisco said the U.S. government’s real target with this law is speech—specifically, a fear that Americans could be “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” But the First Amendment leaves that up to the people of the United States, not the government, Francisco said.
The law bars providing certain services to TikTok and other foreign adversary-controlled apps, including offering them through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google. Thus, it effectively prevents their continued use in the U.S. and absent divestiture.
