Supreme Court signals it will uphold ban on TikTok over national security concerns and other takeaways from oral arguments
CNNCNN — A majority of the Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold a controversial ban on TikTok over concerns about its ties to China, with justices lobbing pointed questions at lawyers for the social media app and a group of its content creators. “The law is only targeted at this foreign corporation, which doesn’t have First Amendment rights,” she said to the lawyer arguing on TikTok’s behalf. “TikTok,” Gorsuch pointed out, “says it could even live with a disclaimer on its website saying this can be covertly manipulated by China.” On a court that has reliably expanded First Amendment rights for several decades, Gorsuch expressed reservations about the government’s theory that those protections don’t even apply in this case. Video Ad Feedback ‘Losing the community I built’: TikTok creator braces for ban 03:07 - Source: CNN One of the important differences between a newspaper and social media platform, Prelogar responded, is that users of social media operate under an assumption that “it’s organically feeding them videos based on the recommendation engine.” Newspapers, she said, operate more like one-way modes of communication. “When push comes to shove and these restrictions take effect,” Prelogar said, “it might be just the jolt that Congress expected the company would need to actually move forward with the divestiture process.” Trump looms over end of arguments The justices could not escape that Trump, though he has not been sworn in yet, took the eyebrow-raising step of filing a brief that urged the court to temporarily pause the ban’s January 19 implementation to give him time, as president, to negotiate a deal with TikTok.