The short-video app TikTok has moved the US Supreme Court in a final bid to seek a temporary block on a law, which requires its parent company, ByteDance, based in China, to divest the app by January 19 or risk a ban.
TikTok and ByteDance has jointly filed an emergency petition to the justices for an injunction to stop looming ban on the social media app used by about 170 million Americans while they appeal a lower court’s ruling that upheld the law. A group of US users of TikTok has filed a similar petition as well.
Earlier in April, Congress had passed the law. The US Justice Department has said that as TikTok poses a national-security threat of immense depth and scale because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users.
On December 6, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington had rejected the app’s arguments that the law violates free speech protections under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
TikTok and ByteDance prayed to the court said that if Americans choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice.
