Broadband's Impact

TikTok Ban Nears as Appeals Court Upholds Divestiture Law

The D.C. Circuit ruling puts ByteDance on the clock to appeal to the Supreme Court or risk losing TikTok’s U.S. market by mid-January.

Jericho Casper

Dec 6, 2024 — 3 min read

Photo of Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2024 – A federal appeals court panel unanimously upheld a law Friday that could result in TikTok being banned in the United States in just a few weeks.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied TikTok’s petition to overturn a law requiring its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its U.S. operations by Jan. 19, 2025, or face a nationwide ban.

The court's decision that the law survived strict scrutiny — a rigorous standard almost never met — made a strong statement about the weight of the government’s national security concerns in this case. Strict scrutiny is the highest standard of judicial review used by courts to determine whether a law that restricts a constitutional right is justified.

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