This action aims to prevent the January 19th ban while legal challenges to the lower court's ruling are pursued, protecting the app's access for approximately 170 million American users.
The legislation, enacted by Congress in April due to national security apprehensions, has been characterized by the Justice Department as a significant threat, citing TikTok's access to extensive data on American users, including their locations and private communications, as well as its potential to covertly influence the content viewed by users.
On December 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed claims from the companies and several TikTok users that the law infringes upon their First Amendment rights. This ruling faced criticism from free speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
Subsequently, on December 13, the D.C. Circuit denied TikTok and ByteDance's emergency request to pause the law's enforcement.
If the injunction is not granted, the ban on TikTok could significantly diminish the company's value for ByteDance and its investors, while also adversely affecting businesses that rely on TikTok for sales growth.
Describing itself as one of the "most important speech platforms" in the U.S., TikTok has argued in its legal documents that there is no immediate national security threat and that postponing the law's enforcement would allow the Supreme Court to assess the legality of the ban, as well as provide the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump an opportunity to review the legislation.
Trump, who attempted to prohibit TikTok during his first term in 2020 without success, has changed his position and pledged during this year's presidential campaign to work towards preserving TikTok. He will assume office on January 20, which is the day following the legal deadline for TikTok.
In its ruling, the DC Circuit stated, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the government acted solely to safeguard that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on individuals in the United States.”
TikTok has refuted claims that it has shared or would share US user data, accusing American lawmakers in the lawsuit of promoting unfounded fears, and has described the proposed ban as a significant deviation from the nation’s commitment to an open Internet.
The platform argued that even a temporary shutdown would devastate its user base, hinder its ability to attract advertisers, and impede its efforts to recruit and retain content creators and talented employees.
The DC Circuit’s ruling emerged amid escalating trade tensions between the two largest global economies, following President Biden’s administration imposing new restrictions on the Chinese semiconductor industry, to which China responded with a ban on the export of gallium, germanium, and antimony to the United States.
U.S. legislation would restrict the provision of specific services to TikTok and other applications controlled by foreign entities deemed adversarial, encompassing their distribution via app stores such as Apple's and Alphabet's Google.
This effectively mandates their removal from U.S. markets unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the stipulated deadline. A comprehensive ban could establish a precedent for future actions against other foreign-owned applications. In 2020, a similar ban was considered for WeChat, a Chinese-owned application.