Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an attempt by TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance to block a law aimed at forcing a sale of the video app short by January 19th, under penalty of ban for national security reasons.
The Court has scheduled hearings in the case for January 10.
McConnell, in a court filing, called the companies’ arguments “meritless and baseless… This is a standard game of litigation at the end of an administration, with one petitioner hoping that the subsequent administration provides a stay of execution. This court should no more tolerate this by foreign adversaries than by hardened criminals.”
McConnell noted that Congress set the Jan. 19 date that “very clearly eliminates any possible political uncertainty in the law’s execution by handing it over to an administration that deeply supported the law’s goals.”
TikTok did not immediately comment. The company noted in legal documents that President-elect Donald Trump has said he doesn’t want TikTok banned.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, in a joint filing, urged the court to block the ban on TikTok “which millions of people use every day to communicate, learn about the world and express oneself.”
The groups called the ban unprecedented, adding that it “will cause extraordinary disruption in Americans’ ability to engage.”
New downloads of TikTok on the Apple or Google app stores will be banned, but existing users will be able to continue accessing TikTok, but the services will deteriorate over time and eventually stop working, as companies will be blocked from providing support.
TikTok said in a court filing this week that it estimates a third of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok will stop accessing the app if the ban lasts a month.
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