US Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Divest-or-Ban Law in TikTok v. Garland

The opinion describes the Act as making it unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain or update TikTok unless US operation of the platform is severed from Chinese control. The prohibitions take effect 270 days after an application is designated as foreign adversary controlled; because the Act itself designates applications operated by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok, they were due to take effect on 19 January 2025. The Act lifts them if a "qualified divestiture" is completed.

What the court decided

The court assumed, without deciding, that the challenged provisions are subject to First Amendment scrutiny. It found them facially content neutral and justified by a content-neutral rationale: preventing China, a designated foreign adversary, from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of US TikTok users. Applying intermediate scrutiny, it held that this is an important government interest and that the Act is sufficiently tailored to it. The court relied on the data collection justification and found it unnecessary to rule on the government's separate concern about covert content manipulation.

The court stressed that its analysis was narrowly focused, given the new technologies involved and the expedited timetable on which the applications were heard, noting that the platform has more than 170 million US users.

Why it matters beyond TikTok

The decision confirms that Congress may target a specific foreign-controlled platform on national security and data protection grounds without triggering strict scrutiny, provided the measure rests on content-neutral justifications. For investors and technology companies with links to jurisdictions designated as foreign adversaries, it signals that US courts are likely to give significant weight to data security findings made by the political branches.

What happens next

Compliance with the Act now turns on the executive branch and on ByteDance. The statute allows a one-time extension of up to 90 days if the President certifies to Congress that significant progress has been made towards a qualified divestiture, with binding legal agreements in place. How the new administration approaches enforcement and any sale will determine TikTok's future in the US market.

Sources

• Supreme Court of the United States: TikTok Inc. v. Garland, Nos. 24-656 and 24-657 (17 January 2025)
• Supreme Court of the United States: Docket No. 24-656