Supreme Court to hear TikTok case before ban deadline

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that would ban the popular social media app next month unless it sells itself.

The case is set for oral argument on Jan. 10, nine days before TikTok is scheduled to be shut down in the U.S.

“The parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment,” the court said in an order Wednesday.

TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been uncertain since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app because of national security concerns. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

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TikTok on Monday filed for an emergency reprieve with the Supreme Court to buy more time before a nationwide ban was set to go into effect. The court declined to grant that request.

In its filing for a temporary injunction, TikTok said a ban would “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.”

More than 170 million Americans use the video app, on which people share dance routines, news stories, recipes and funny videos.

This is a developing story.