The Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok will be banned in the United States early next year after President-elect Donald Trump also signaled he might try to stop the ban this week.
The country’s highest court set oral arguments in the case for Friday, January 10, just nine days ahead of the looming deadline on January 19.
It comes after Congress passed a law earlier this year banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells its stakes by the deadline.
Lawmakers were responding to warnings that the wildly popular social media app is a national security concern with the collection of Americans’ data.
But some 170 million Americans use the video app.
Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which would ban TikTok, violates the First Amendment.
Both TikTok and the Justice Department were directed to file briefs before 5pm ET on Friday, December 27.
The Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok will be banned in the United States as the deadline looms on January 19
On Monday, TikTok filed for an emergency injunction with the Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals last week rejected its effort to temporarily block the law banning the app while it fights it in court.
The decision by the court to hear arguments in the case comes just days after Trump also weighed in on the TikTok ban.
He suggested he could try to stop the ban on TikTok in the U.S. as the deadline loomed.
‘We’ll take a look at TikTok,’ Trump said in response to a reporter question on Monday while speaking in Mar-a-Lago.
‘I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points,’ the 78-year-old claimed. ‘There are those who say TikTok had something to do with that.’
Hours after Trump’s comments, a source familiar confirmed with DailyMail.com that the president-elect met with the TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Monday.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the TikTok ban on January 10, it revealed on Wednesday
President-elect Trump speaking at Mar-a-Lago on December 16 said ‘we’ll take a look at TikTok’ when asked about the looming ban on the popular video app in the U.S. if it’s not sold by Chinese-owned ByteDance by next month’s deadline
If Trump were able to prevent the ban, it would be a major reversal from 2020 when he tried to block the social media app and have it sold to a U.S. company.
But the president-elect changed his stance on allowing TikTok to remain in the U.S. changed in March while he was running for a second term.
While he did not win the youth vote outright, he made major gains with the voting bloc, which he attributed to the Chinese video app and gave a shoutout to his youngest son Barron.
‘TikTok had an impact, and so we’re taking a look at it,’ Trump said.
In March, Trump reversed his stance on TikTok around the same time he met with Republican megadonor Jeff Yass who owns a share of ByteDance. Trump said the social media app was not discussed in their meeting.
The bill banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company divests passed in April with bipartisan support. President Biden signed it into law soon after.
