How the US Supreme Court and Trump could stop a TikTok ban

A US law banning the popular video-sharing app TikTok is due to come into force at the start of 2025 – but the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok’s legal challenge to this. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has hinted he may take action against the law, raising new questions about whether it will pass.

What would the TikTok ban actually do?

Starting January 19, 2025, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” will block American companies like Google and Apple from allowing users to access or update TikTok through their app stores — unless TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance sells the app to an American company . It would also require ISPs to block the platform on US internet browsers. It was approved with bipartisan support by the House and Senate before being signed into law by President Joe Biden in April 2024.

If the ban is implemented, it would be virtually impossible for new users in the US to download the TikTok app, said Kate Ruane of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a non-profit organization based in Washington DC. For the 170 million existing TikTok users in the US, the app can stay on their phones. However, without access to updates, its functionality would degrade over time.

People in the US can still potentially access TikTok using a virtual private network (VPN) service that hides a user’s location. But the experience of using the app could still get worse, Ruane says: because TikTok content would no longer be located on nearby US servers, it would load more slowly.

These restrictions stem from privacy and security concerns. US lawmakers have said TikTok is a “national security threat” because China’s government could force ByteDance to hand over TikTok users’ data or pressure the app to change its algorithm and present content that could manipulate public opinion. However, no hard evidence has been presented to support these claims. TikTok has said it has invested heavily to keep US data safe from outside influence and manipulation.

“It is deeply troubling that a country like the United States, which has consistently led the way on the global stage in defending the free, open and interoperable internet, is now taking a step to ban access to an entire platform within its borders – the is an extraordinary measure,” says Ruane.

Will Supreme Court Block TikTok Ban?

Although judges in the lower DC Circuit Court of Appeals previously allowed the US law to stand, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok’s appeal. TikTok’s position is that the ban amounts to censorship that violates the freedom of speech that Americans have under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

“I’d like to see the court really grapple with how this law harms those rights and how the government needs to account for the rights of social media users as it tries to regulate these speech platforms,” ​​Ruane says. “The courts have not done so in examining this particular law, although there are users who are suing, claiming that the law violates their First Amendment rights, unlike TikTok.”

The most likely short-term effect is that the US Supreme Court will temporarily suspend the implementation of the law while the justices consider the case, says Ruane. That could delay the law’s effects for several months — the amount of time the Supreme Court requires to make its decision in 2025. TikTok has specifically asked for such a pause in its lawsuit.

If the Supreme Court finds that the ban violates First Government Amendment rights and that the United States has less restrictive options at its disposal, it can issue an injunction that effectively makes it impossible for the government to justify such an outright ban, says Ruane. The Supreme Court may also require the lower DC Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its analysis of the case. Such decisions could force the government to find more narrowly tailored ways to regulate TikTok.

How could Trump prevent the TikTok ban?

In his first term, President-elect Trump supported plans to ban TikTok, but he has since changed his stance. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he promised to “save TikTok” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, as he urged American voters to support him. On December 16, Trump met with the CEO of TikTok and later said during a press conference that his administration would “take a look” at the ban. Even if the Supreme Court eventually agrees to let the ban stand, Trump could change the law’s effect.

For example, the president could go back to U.S. lawmakers and ask them to change the national law by repealing or amending it, Ruane says. She also described a scenario in which Trump could potentially direct his administration’s US attorney general not to enforce the law — though she warned that would be outside the norms of how the US government has typically operated.

Although Trump’s attorney general announced that the US government would not enforce the ban, US companies such as Google and Apple may still be reluctant to allow people to access the app through their platforms. “If I’m responsible for legal risk in one of these companies, I don’t know if I’d say ‘we’re going to trust that [decision]it’s fine for us to provide access to this app that has been banned,’” says Ruane.

What would a US TikTok ban mean for the rest of the world?

If passed, the US ban could have significant ripple effects around the world. For starters, people in other countries would no longer have access to new content from US-based TikTok creators and influencers. But more crucially, the US government’s actions could encourage other countries to see similar restrictions.

The US is not the first nation to act against TikTok – India’s government has blocked the app since 2020 – but Ruane expressed concern that a US ban could encourage “authoritarian regimes” to block any app, including some developed in the US, by to invoke similar national security justifications.

“I think it will definitely be used as a justification to ban TikTok elsewhere, but also to ban access to other applications that have served as important speech platforms in countries where the Internet would not otherwise be so open,” says Ruane.

Would the TikTok ban protect privacy?

The ostensible goal of the ban is to protect the privacy of American TikTok users — to prevent their data from falling into the hands of another nation — and to address concerns that China’s government could manipulate content presented to app users in the United States. But Ruane says there are many alternative actions US lawmakers can take before blocking TikTok entirely.

For example, the government could require TikTok to be more transparent about how it collects and shares individual users’ data and what measures it takes to protect their privacy. To address concerns about manipulation, lawmakers could require the platform to share how its algorithms filter and manage the content that users see, Ruane says.

The US government could also consider passing a consumer protection law to provide better legal protections for how social media platforms can share individuals’ data with other companies or governments. “These options in terms of consumer privacy and transparency are less extreme than banning an entire platform,” says Ruane.