US Supreme Court appears likely to uphold TikTok ban-or-sale law

• The US Supreme Court heard arguments on a law that could shut down TikTok in the US.
• TikTok’s lawyers argued the law violates free speech and could lead to dangerous censorship.
• Solicitor-General Elizabeth Prelogar claimed TikTok poses a national security threat due to potential data misuse.

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Friday local time, in a high-stakes case reviewing a federal law that would effectively shut down TikTok in the United States in less than two weeks if the company does not divest from Chinese ownership.

After roughly two and a half hours of arguments over the law, the justices appeared likely to uphold it.

Attorneys for TikTok, its parent company ByteDance and content creators argued the ban-or-sale law would be a sweeping violation of free speech protections for the platform’s more than 170 million users in the United States.

TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco also said it could also open the door to a dangerous form of censorship. He added that “we shut down” if the law goes into effect, although other legal experts dispute that contention.

Solicitor-General Elizabeth B. Prelogar countered that TikTok was a glaring national security threat that could be used by China to harvest data from millions of Americans, manipulate them or even blackmail them.

The law is set to take effect on January 19, unless the Supreme Court acts to block it.