TikTok v. Garland | |
---|---|
Argued January 10, 2025 Decided January 17, 2025 | |
Full case name | TikTok, Inc. et al., Petitioners v. Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General Brian Firebaugh, et al., Petitioners v. Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General |
Docket nos. | 24-656 24-657 |
Citations | 604 U.S. ___ ( more ) |
Argument | Oral argument |
Decision | Opinion |
Case history | |
Prior | Petition for review denied. TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd. v. Garland, No. 24-1113 (D.C. Cir 2024). |
Questions presented | |
Whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment. | |
Holding | |
The provisions of the Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Per curiam | |
Concurrence | Sotomayor |
Concurrence | Gorsuch |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend I; Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act |
TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025), was a United States Supreme Court case brought by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok on the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) based on the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the Bill of Attainder Clause of Article One, Section Nine, and the Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. [1] [2] [3] The case was consolidated with Firebaugh v. Garland, a lawsuit filed by TikTok content creators against the law. [4] [5]
Citing national security concerns, the U.S. Congress passed PAFACA in April 2024 towards regulating social media companies owned by foreign corporations from, or by corporations owned by foreign nationals from, countries designated as U.S. foreign adversaries and that have been determined by the President to present a significant national security threat, requiring these companies to divest themselves from the foreign entities. The law specifically named Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok as a "foreign adversary controlled application", requiring ByteDance to divest itself by January 19, 2025, or otherwise require the app to be removed from app stores. [6]
ByteDance sued the federal government following passage of PAFACA, asserting the law violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law in December 2024 [7] [8] [9] and declined to grant a temporary injunction while ByteDance sought an appeal from the Supreme Court. [10] [11]
The Supreme Court granted certiorari for TikTok's appeal on an expedited schedule, and heard oral arguments on January 10, 2025, nine days before the law's divestment deadline. In a per curiam decision released on January 17, 2025, the Court ruled that the law was constitutional, as Congress had shown the law satisfies intermediate scrutiny review on their concerns related to national security. [12]
President Joe Biden signed PAFACA into law on April 24, 2024, codified as 15 U.S.C. § 9901. [13] It potentially bans apps made by any "covered company controlled by a foreign adversary and determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States" unless exempted through qualified divestment. [13] The law gives TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. If ByteDance fails to do so, TikTok will face a ban from U.S. app stores and internet hosting services, limiting new downloads and access to its content. The deadline for the sale is January 19, 2025, but Biden can extend it by another 90 days if progress is made, potentially giving TikTok up to a year before a ban is enforced. [14]
On May 7, 2024, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the legislation primarily on First Amendment grounds, alleging that the forced divestiture or ban of the platform would violate the free speech rights of the company and its users. The company accused the U.S. government of operating on "hypothetical" national security concerns, contending that it has not outlined any credible security threat posed by the platform in an adequate manner, and has not explained why TikTok "should be excluded from evaluation under the standards Congress concurrently imposed on every other platform." [15] [16] [17] The lawsuit also alleged that the Chinese government would not permit ByteDance to include the algorithm that has been the "key to the success of TikTok in the United States." [18]
In the lawsuit, TikTok requested a declaratory judgment to prevent the PAFACA from being enforced. [19] The Court of Appeals expedited the case, setting oral arguments for September 2024, [20] and a decision by December 2024. [21] In June 2024, TikTok presented briefs to the court that laid out why the company believes the ban to be unconstitutional under the First Amendment. [22] TikTok argued any divestiture or separation would take years and the law runs afoul of Americans' free speech rights. [22] The brief included a 90-page proposal about plans by TikTok to address American national security concerns. [23] The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responded the following month, in which it asked the court to reject TikTok's legal challenge. [24] The DoJ argued the law is aimed at addressing national security concerns, not speech, and is aimed at China's ability to exploit TikTok to access Americans’ sensitive personal information. [24] The DOJ alleged that ByteDance employees in China obtained sensitive information on U.S. users, such as views on abortion, religion, and gun control, from overseas TikTok employees through Lark. [25] In August and September 2024, DOJ filed classified documents with the court to outline additional security concerns regarding ByteDance's ownership of TikTok. [24] [26]
Oral arguments were held on September 16, 2024. [26] On December 6, 2024, the Court of Appeals rejected TikTok's constitutional arguments and found that the law does not "contravene the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," nor does it "violate the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws." [27] "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States," Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg wrote in the court's majority opinion. "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." [28] While the majority opinion concluded that the law triggered heightened scrutiny, it did not decide whether strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny should apply but concluded that the law satisfied the strict scrutiny standard, while the concurring opinion in the case filed by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan also concluded that the law did not violate the First Amendment but only needed to satisfy intermediate scrutiny. [29] [30] [31] [32]
However, because the government referenced content on TikTok in its justification for the law, [30] [33] [34] the majority opinion concluded that the law could still trigger strict scrutiny. [29] The government cited two national security concerns as justifications for the law: "(1) to counter the PRC's efforts to collect great quantities of data about tens of millions of Americans; and (2) to limit the PRC's ability to manipulate content covertly on the TikTok platform". [35] The majority opinion concluded that these justifications were compelling government interests, and deferred to the government's evaluations of factual circumstances and predictions that TikTok would likely comply with PRC requests to manipulate content on the platform. [35] After concluding that the law was facially content-neutral, the majority opinion concluded that any new owner of TikTok "could circulate the same mix of content as before without running afoul of the [PAFACA]", and that the government's concern was about "covert content manipulation" due to its control by a foreign adversary country rather than "content suppression"–which was how the company had characterized the government's position. [35] [33]
The majority opinion concluded that the TikTok-specific provisions of the law were narrowly tailored to achieving the government's national security concerns, [33] and that it would be inappropriate for the court to "reject the Government's risk assessment and override its ultimate judgment" that a national security agreement that the company proposed to the government was less effective than the law's ban-or-divestment requirement. [35] [6] The concurring opinion also concluded that the law is content-neutral, but when considered along with the history of restrictions on foreign control of broadcast media in the United States, the concurring opinion concluded that the law only needed to satisfy intermediate scrutiny. [35] [36] [37] [32] With respect to TikTok's equal protection claims under the Due Process Clause, the DC Circuit concluded that the company's claims "boil[ed] down to pointing out that TikTok alone is singled out by name in the [PAFACA]" but that the differential treatment was justified by the "TikTok-specific national security harms identified and substantiated by the Government." [38] [39] [40]
Following the Supreme Court's ruling in Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. (2005), [41] the DC Circuit rejected TikTok's assertion that the PAFACA constituted a per se regulatory taking under the Takings Clause because TikTok can pursue a qualified divestment under the law and thus would not be deprived of all economic use of TikTok, [42] while the DC Circuit also concluded that the difficulties related to a divestment asserted by the company are instead caused by PRC export regulations rather than the PAFACA. [43] [44] Following the framework established in Nixon v. General Services Administration (1977), [45] [46] [47] the DC Circuit also concluded that the PAFACA did not qualify as a bill of attainder because while the court concluded that the law applies with specificity, the court also concluded that it does not constitute a legislative punishment because the law's divestment requirement is "a sale, not a confiscation", is more analogous to a line of business restriction rather than an employment ban, serves a non-punitive and preventive national security purpose, and that "TikTok [did] not come close to satisfying [the] requirement" of demonstrating that the legislative record shows a congressional intent to punish by passing the law. [48]
On December 9, TikTok and ByteDance filed a motion for an injunction in the case to allow the app to continue operating until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear an appeal of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruling. [10] The appellate court rejected the motion on December 13. [11] On the same day, the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party sent letters in reference to the December 6 ruling to the chief executive officers of Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. to instruct the companies to be prepared to comply with the law by the January 19 deadline. [49]
On December 16, TikTok appealed the injunction decision to the Supreme Court. [50] [51] On December 18, the Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari to hear the case and scheduled oral arguments for January 10, 2025. [4] [5] The court limited the scope of its review to the legal issue of PAFACA's constitutionality under the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment. [52] One "sign of the significance of the issue" was that the court moved with "extraordinary speed". [52] The court took only two days to respond to TikTok's application, did not follow its customary practice of waiting for the government to respond, and immediately set oral argument for a special hearing (normally, oral argument is set only after the parties have filed their briefing on the merits of an appeal). [52] On December 27, President-elect Donald Trump filed an amicus brief that urged the Court to issue a stay of the law's divestiture deadline without assuming a position on the merits of either party's position. [53] [54]
Oral arguments were held as scheduled on January 10. [55] [56] Noel Francisco, a former Solicitor General of the United States, represented TikTok, Jeffrey L. Fisher represented the creators in the consolidated case Firebaugh v. Garland, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar represented the government. [55] [56] Observers said the Court appears likely to uphold the law, with a majority expressing skepticism at TikTok's arguments. [57]
The Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision on January 17, 2025, holding that even if this regulation of business ownership implicated First Amendment rights by burdening the free speech of TikTok users, it survives review under intermediate scrutiny. Agreeing with the D.C. Circuit, the unsigned opinion considered PAFACA as content-neutral, despite exempting certain types of foreign-owned businesses, because it equally burdened all types of content on TikTok. [58] The ruling stated "Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary" and that the law "does not violate petitioners' First Amendment rights". [59] [60] The ruling further stated that their decision was "narrowly focused" to apply to TikTok only due to the timing of the pending deadline. [61]
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote concurring opinions. Sotomayor believed the Court should have addressed the First Amendment issues associated with the act instead of bypassing the question. [62] Gorsuch wrote that he was persuaded by the concerns over the "vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans." [59] [63]
TikTok did not actively seek a divestment to comply with PAFACA after its passage. [64] Immediately after the Supreme Court ruling, TikTok stated they will be forced to shut down on January 19 without any commitment from the Biden administration that they would not enforce PAFACA. A spokesperson for Joe Biden stated that because of the Donald Trump presidential inauguration occuring on January 20, that any decisions related to PAFACA enforcement would be left to the incoming adminstration. [65] Trump said he will issue an executive order to give TikTok a 90-day extension from enforcement once he takes office, [66] still leaving TikTok in violation of the law for January 19. [67] ByteDance opted to shutter TikTok on January 18, 2025, including its removal from app stores, stating in a message to users they anticipate the shutdown will be temporary. [68] With Trump's assurances that he will issue an extension and will not prosecute app store owners, TikTok started restoring its service on January 19, 2025. [69]
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Title II of Pub. L. 95–223, 91 Stat. 1626, enacted October 28, 1977, is a United States federal law authorizing the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. The act was signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 28, 1977.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Xiaohongshu, officially styled as REDnote and commonly known in English as RedNote or RED, is a Chinese social networking and e-commerce platform.
TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin, is a Chinese short-form video-hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smartphone app or the web.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$45.6 billion as of October 2024, according to Forbes and US$43.1 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.
U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
[[File:Availability of TikTok in the World 2025—present.svg|thumb|300x300px|{{hanging indent|
There are reports of TikTok and Douyin censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
NetChoice is a trade association of online businesses that advocates for free expression and free enterprise on the internet. It currently has six active First Amendment lawsuits over state-level internet regulations, including NetChoice v. Paxton, Moody v. NetChoice, NetChoice v. Bonta and NetChoice v. Yost.
CapCut, known in China as JianYing and formerly internationally as ViaMaker, is a Chinese short-form video editing app developed by ByteDance.
Shou Zi Chew is a Singaporean business executive who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of TikTok, an online video platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, since 2021.
TikTok has been under a de jure nationwide ban in the United States since January 19, 2025, due to the US government's concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the government of the People's Republic of China. The ban took effect after TikTok chose to shut down its operations in the United States rather than divest from Chinese ownership in response to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Prior to the ban, individual states, cities, universities, and government-affiliated devices had restricted TikTok.
The RESTRICT Act is a proposed law that was first introduced in the United States Senate on March 7, 2023. Introduced by Senator Mark Warner, the Act proposed that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies products or services when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose an "undue and unacceptable risk" to the national security of the United States or its citizens.
Lemon8 is a social media app owned by Heliophilia Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean company connected to the Chinese internet company ByteDance. It was launched in 2020 and modeled after Xiaohongshu, which was released in 2013.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 to 360 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application"; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination, with the company to become compliant by January 19, 2025. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.
Anderson v. TikTok, 2:22-cv-01849,, is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in which the court held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), 47 U.S.C. § 230, does not bar claims against TikTok, a video-sharing social media platform, regarding TikTok's recommendations to users via its algorithm.
The 2025 TikTok–REDnote migration is an event that occurred before the possible TikTok ban in the United States. Over 2.7 million TikTok users migrated to a similar Chinese app called Xiaohongshu in protest on January 2025.