After nearly three hours of Supreme Court arguments Friday morning, Americans are one step closer to learning whether a TikTok ban will take effect in nine days.
The justices will now reflect on the discussion and choose a path forward, deciding whether national security concerns about the app’s Chinese owners justify interference with TikTok users’ free speech.
Friday’s arguments came after nine months of legal wrangling and years of debate over TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.
The Biden administration and lawmakers from both major parties believe ByteDance is using or will use data collected from TikTok — and videos disseminated by TikTok — to harm the United States. In April, Congress passed and Biden signed a policy that will require app stores to remove TikTok on Jan. 19 if it’s not sold by then.
TikTok and ByteDance, as well as some TikTok content creators, believe national security concerns need to be resolved in some other way than a TikTok ban to satisfy speech rights. They asked the Supreme Court to save TikTok after losing in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling before Jan. 19, although TikTok’s supporters have suggested that the justices should instead temporarily postpone the ban to give President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office on Jan. 20, time to resolve the dispute.
Here are three takeaways from Friday’s oral arguments in the TikTok case.
Most, if not all, justices understand and sympathize with the government’s national security concerns
Throughout Friday’s oral arguments, multiple justices expressed support for the government’s claim that it’s dangerous for China to have access to so much American data through TikTok.
That doesn’t mean it’s an open-and-shut case, but it does mean that attorneys for TikTok, ByteDance and TikTok content creators faced a lot of tough questions.
In addition to pushing the attorneys to describe the relationship between TikTok’s leaders in the U.S. and its Chinese owners, the justices raised questions about whether a TikTok ban would actually directly disrupt Americans’ speech.
The law doesn’t require TikTok to shut down, they said. It requires TikTok to find a new owner.
Noel Francisco, who argued on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance, told the justices that it’s not as simple as that. Without a connection to ByteDance, TikTok would be a very different app, he said.
To be clear, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was arguing on behalf of the Biden administration and wants the court to allow the TikTok ban to take place, also faced tough questions. But the justices generally asked her clarifying questions, rather than broad questions that threatened the foundation of her case.
Trump looms large in the TikTok case
Since he hasn’t yet returned to office, President-elect Donald Trump’s interests weren’t directly represented during Friday’s arguments.
But the former and future president still played a role in the proceedings, with Francisco and several justices predicting what he might do later this month.
Francisco said the Supreme Court should be alert to the possibility that Trump could help negotiate a TikTok sale if given the chance. But that argument was undercut by other comments he made about just how difficult it would be to keep TikTok as we know it alive if it can’t maintain ties to ByteDance.
Divestiture would be “exceedingly difficult under any time frame,” Francisco said.
ByteDance has previously said it prefers a TikTok shutdown over a sale.
There were moments of levity.
Friday’s arguments stand out from typical Supreme Court arguments in at least two ways.
For one thing, they took place less than a month after the justices took up the case.
For another, members of the public who attended the hearing burst out laughing several times during the proceedings.
Several justices made humorous remarks. Cat videos came up two or three times.
When discussing social media algorithms, Justice Elena Kagan noted that it’s normal for them to be shrouded in mystery.
“You get what you get and you think, ‘That’s puzzling,’” she said and then paused as listeners laughed.
Chief Justice John Roberts joked that if ByteDance’s goal is to make Americans argue with each other, then it’s working.