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TikTok has lost an emergency bid to temporarily halt a fast-approaching deadline under a US “divest or ban” law, leaving the fate of the popular video app owned by China’s ByteDance in the country ever more uncertain.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday rejected the emergency motion filed by the platform and its Chinese parent company at the start of the week, requesting the law be stayed from taking effect next month while it asks the Supreme Court to take up a challenge.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year, orders TikTok to be banned in the country if the app fails to divest from its parent by January 19 2025 — the day before Donald Trump is inaugurated as the new president.
Last week, the US appeals court upheld the law. TikTok subsequently requested a temporary injunction.
“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the appeals court wrote in a brief order on Friday.
The court added that TikTok’s petition had relied on claims of free speech violations, which the judges had already rejected in their original decision last week.
The ruling now places TikTok’s future in the hands of the Supreme Court, which will need to decide if it will hear the appeal.
TikTok may also be hoping for assistance from Trump, who has promised to “save” the app, without making clear the mechanisms he would use to do so when he takes the White House.
The US Department of Justice has argued that TikTok poses a national security threat due to its Chinese connection and could be wielded for espionage or propaganda purposes. A US House of Representatives committee on Friday sent letters to Apple and Google, which operate popular app stores, reminding them that updates or downloads of the TikTok app would be prohibited after the deadline passes unless TikTok is divested.
TikTok has denied the accusations and deemed the law unconstitutional, while arguing that a spin-off would be technically “unfeasible” in the timeframe. Beijing has also said it opposes a sale.
TikTok said in a statement on Friday: “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech. The voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world will be silenced on January 19th, 2025 unless the TikTok ban is halted.”
Additional reporting by Stefania Palma in Washington
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