Docket 24-656
TikTok Inc. v. Garland
DecidedJan 17, 2025
Per Curiamdecision
Source: CourtListener.
Supreme Court upholds federal law requiring TikTok to be sold or shut down over national security concerns
Impact8/10
What it does
The Court unanimously upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which bars U.S. companies from distributing, maintaining, or updating TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., sells it. The Court applied intermediate scrutiny — a legal test that asks whether a law advances an important government interest without restricting significantly more speech than necessary — and found the law passed that test. The ruling means TikTok's effective ban in the United States, absent a qualifying sale, is constitutionally permitted.
Who benefits
The U.S. government and Congress, whose national security judgment about the risks of Chinese government access to American user data was upheld. Americans whose personal data is collected by TikTok, to the extent the law reduces the risk of that data reaching a foreign adversary.
Who is affected
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd., who must either complete a qualifying sale of TikTok's U.S. operations or cease operating in the United States. The more than 170 million U.S. TikTok users and content creators who use the platform to publish, share, and view videos, and whose access to that platform is effectively ended absent a sale.
Practical impact
As of January 19, 2025, U.S. companies are prohibited from distributing, maintaining, or updating TikTok unless ByteDance Ltd. completes a qualifying sale that severs Chinese control over the platform, including its recommendation algorithm and data-sharing arrangements. TikTok users and creators lose access to the platform in the United States unless and until such a sale occurs. The President retains authority to grant a one-time 90-day extension if there is certified progress toward a qualifying sale.
Majority reasoning
The Court assumed — without definitively deciding — that the law triggers First Amendment scrutiny, because even if the law does not directly regulate speech, an effective ban on a platform used by 170 million Americans places a significant burden on expressive activity. The Court then held that the law is content neutral — meaning it targets the platform not because of what people say on it, but because of who controls it and what data it collects — and therefore only needs to pass the less demanding intermediate scrutiny standard rather than the stricter standard applied to laws that target specific messages or viewpoints. The Court found the government's interest in preventing China from accessing the personal data of tens of millions of Americans to be an important and well-supported national security concern, noting that Chinese law can compel ByteDance to hand over data and that the government's prediction of potential misuse deserves substantial deference in foreign policy and national security matters. The Court also found the law sufficiently tailored, reasoning that a conditional ban — one that lifts if a qualifying sale occurs — is not broader than necessary, and that the government is not required to adopt the least restrictive alternative as long as its chosen approach is reasonable and grounded in substantial evidence. Finally, even setting aside a separate government argument about preventing covert manipulation of TikTok's recommendation algorithm (which might raise harder First Amendment questions), the Court concluded the data-collection rationale alone was sufficient to sustain the law, given the overwhelming focus on data security in the congressional record and the law's broad bipartisan passage.
Constitutional question
Does the federal law requiring ByteDance Ltd. to divest TikTok or face a ban on its U.S. operations violate the First Amendment free speech rights of TikTok's operating companies and its users?