(Corrects paragraph 5 to remove extraneous word “not”)
Written by David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department asked the Supreme Court late on Friday to reject President-elect Donald Trump's request to delay implementation of a law that would ban or force the sale of the popular social media app TikTok by January 19.
Last week, Trump filed a legal brief in which he said he should have time after taking office on January 20 to pursue a “political solution” to the issue. The court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on January 10.
The law, passed in April, requires the Chinese company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, to divest the platform's American assets or face a ban. TikTok did not immediately comment.
The Justice Department said in its filing that Trump's request could only be approved if ByteDance demonstrated it was likely to succeed on the merits, but the company did not do that.
The Justice Department said no one disputes that China “seeks to undermine American interests by collecting sensitive data on Americans and engaging in covert and malign influence operations.”
The government asserted that “no one can seriously doubt that (China's) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a serious national security threat: TikTok's collection of reams of sensitive data about 170 million Americans and their contacts makes it a powerful tool for espionage.”
Trump's lawyer, Dr. John Sawyer, last week, said that the President-elect “respectfully requests that the Court consider postponing the divestment deadline of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thereby allowing the incoming administration of President Trump the opportunity to seek a political resolution of the issues raised in this case.” “.
TikTok on Friday urged the Supreme Court to block the law on free speech grounds under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. She said Congress did not seek to ban Chinese-owned apps like Shein or Temu, strongly suggesting that it “targeted TikTok for its social media content, not its data.”
If the court doesn't block the law by January 19, new downloads of TikTok will be blocked on the Apple (NASDAQ:) or Google (NASDAQ:) app stores but existing users can continue to access the app. Services will deteriorate over time and eventually stop working as companies will be prevented from providing support.
Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days if he sees ByteDance making significant progress toward divestment.
Trump's support for TikTok is a reversal from 2020, when he tried to ban the app in the United States and force its sale to American companies due to its Chinese ownership.
