TikTok Will get Supreme Court docket Listening to Simply Days Earlier than Ban Hits

TikTok, staring down the barrel of a ban, has secured an opportunity at throwing a last-ditch Hail Mary to save lots of itself. The Supreme Court docket has agreed to hear arguments from TikTok and its mother or father firm ByteDance as to why it shouldn’t be banned inside US borders. The listening to is about for January 10, simply 9 days earlier than the curtains may drop on the short-form video app.

TikTok requested the excessive courtroom to quickly block enforcement of a legislation that will ban the app until it’s bought to an American agency. The courtroom isn’t instantly issuing that emergency reduction however will give the platform the chance to make its case earlier than its ban is about to happen on January 19. The expectation, per court watchers at The New York Times, is that SCOTUS will decide earlier than the sell-or-die deadline hits for TikTok.

The listening to represents the ultimate probability for TikTok to tug its head out of the guillotine. The Defending People from International Adversary Managed Purposes Act, passed earlier this year, gave ByteDance 9 months to succeed in an settlement to divest itself of TikTok over considerations that the platform is operated by a agency that has ties to the Chinese language authorities. A sale has not materialized—and ByteDance apparently did not really go looking for buyers—so the corporate has targeted solely on authorized challenges.

Up to now, these have fallen flat. TikTok took a problem to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and argued {that a} ban on the app would symbolize a violation of the First Modification, as it could limit the suitable of People to specific themselves on TikTok. The courtroom’s panel of three judges gave that a big thumbs down, stating that the First Modification exists to guard free speech in america, and the ban represents the federal government performing “solely to guard that freedom from a international adversary nation and to restrict that adversary’s potential to assemble information on individuals in america.”

So it’s onto the Supreme Court docket for TikTok, the place it expects to seek out pleasant judges—or not less than ones sympathetic to the concept of a delay. At this level, that is likely to be all TikTok wants. Firm CEO Shou Zi Chew made a trip down to Mar-a-Lago to fulfill with Trump earlier this week and plead his case for blocking the ban. Trump appears to be not less than open to this concept, partially as a result of he believes the platform played a part in his electoral victory.

Does it matter that Trump is the one who started the ball rolling on a ban within the first place? After all not. That was years in the past when he thought TikTok would damage him. Now Trump thinks TikTok is good, actually. And all the corporate wants is a few additional days for Trump to settle again into the White Home and concern some type of intervention on the ban.

At this level, even getting the Supreme Court docket to say it wants extra time to listen to arguments would represent a win for TikTok as it could probably cross the buck to Trump. Time is just not on TikTok’s facet, nevertheless it additionally doesn’t want way more of it to probably save itself.