On Friday, December 6, a Federal Court unanimously upheld a January bill seeking to ban TikTok. The U.S. Court of Appeals rejected TikTok’s attempt to overturn the legislation, which mandates the app sever ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The court dismissed TikTok’s argument that the ban infringed upon its First Amendment rights, emphasizing the amendment’s primary purpose of safeguarding free speech within the United States.
In his written opinion, Judge Douglas Ginsburg explained, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States…Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok stated it plans to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes proclaimed in a statement Friday.
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