The Social media platform TikTok asked the Supreme Court of the USA on Monday to save it from the nationwide effect in a matter of weeks by temporarily blocking it. TikTok is making a case that this ban violates the First Amendment rights of both the company and its 170 million American users. They also urged the court to maintain the status quo while deciding whether to hear an appeal.
Lawyers for TikTok wrote in their emergency application, “Congress’s unprecedented attempt to single out applicants and bar them from operating one of the most significant speech platforms in this nation presents grave constitutional problems that this court likely will not allow to stand.”
The law to ban one of the biggest social media platforms in the world was signed by President Biden in the spring with wide bipartisan support. The lawmakers said that the app’s Chinese ownership poses a grave threat to the national security of the United States of America. Moreover, the app can be used to spread propaganda to the people of the USA. They have also noted that some of America’s biggest tech and social media platforms, Facebook and YouTube, are banned in China.
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A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the plea in early December, claiming that the lawmakers’ actions were justified considering the national security reasons. Judge Douglas H Ginsburg, one of the three judges, wrote to the majority and said, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here, the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
