US court rejects TikTok request to temporarily halt pending US ban

14/12/2024 12:16

TikTok must now move quickly with a request to the Supreme Court to block or overturn a law that would require its Chinese parent ByteDance to divest of the short-video app by Jan. 19 after an appeals court on Friday rejected a bid for more time.



TikTok and ByteDance on Monday had filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.



The companies had warned that without court action, the law will "shut down TikTok — one of the nation's most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users."



But the court rejected the bid, saying TikTok and ByteDance had not identified a previous case "in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court," Friday's unanimous court order said.



A TikTok spokesperson said after the ruling that the company plans to take its case to the Supreme Court, "which has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech."