The two sides in the high-profile Supreme Court battle over a measure that could shut down TikTok made their closing written arguments on Friday, strongly challenging China’s influence over the site and the role the First Amendment should play in evaluating the law. .
Their orders, filed on an extremely abbreviated timeline set last month by judges, were part of a high-stakes showdown over the government’s insistence that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, sell the app’s operations in the United States or to close it. The Supreme Court, in an attempt to resolve the case before the January 19 statutory deadline, will hear arguments in a special session next Friday.
The court’s decision, which could be issued this month, will decide the fate of a powerful and pervasive cultural phenomenon that uses a sophisticated algorithm to feed a personalized series of short videos to users. TikTok has become, especially for younger generations, a leading source of information and entertainment.
“Rarely, if ever, has the court dealt with a free speech case that matters to so many people,” said a document filed Friday on behalf of a group of TikTok users. “170 million Americans use TikTok on a regular basis to communicate, be entertained, and follow news and current events. If the government prevails here, users in America will lose access to the platform’s billions of videos.”
The newsletters made only brief or indirect references to the unusual request by President-elect Donald J. Trump last week asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block the law so he could take up the issue once he takes office.
The deadline set by law to sell or shut down TikTok is January 19, a day before Mr. Trump.
“This unfortunate juncture,” his editorial said, “interferes with President Trump’s ability to manage United States foreign policy and pursue a resolution to both protect national security and save a social media platform that provides a popular vehicle for 170 million Americans to exercise their basic First Amendment rights.”
The law allows the president to extend the deadline for 90 days in limited circumstances. But that provision does not appear to apply, as it requires the President to certify to Congress that significant progress has been made toward a sale supported by “relevant binding legal agreements.”
TikTok’s brief emphasized that the First Amendment protects Americans’ access to foreign adversary speech, even if it is propaganda. The alternative to outright censorship, they wrote, is a legal requirement to disclose the source of the speech.
“Disclosure is the time-tested, less restrictive alternative to address a concern that the public is being misled about the source or nature of speech received — including in foreign affairs and national security contexts,” TikTok’s update said.
The users brief echoed the theme. “What customs and case law allows us,” he said, “is a requirement to disclose foreign influence so that people have full information to decide what to believe.”
The government said this approach would not work. “Such blanket, permanent disclosure would be patently ineffective,” Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the US attorney general, wrote on Friday.
In a brief filed last week in the case, TikTok v. Garland, No. 24-656, the government said that foreign propaganda can be dealt with without violating the Constitution.
“The First Amendment would not have required our nation to tolerate Soviet ownership and control of American radio stations (or other communications channels and vital infrastructure) during the Cold War,” the brief said, “and it also does not require of us to tolerate ownership and control of TikTok by a foreign adversary today.”
The users’ editorial disputed this statement. “In fact,” the report said, “the United States tolerated the publication of Pravda – the original tool of Soviet propaganda – in this country at the height of the Cold War.”
TikTok itself said the government was wrong to blame it for failing to “refute” the allegation that “ByteDance has engaged in censorship or manipulation of content on its platforms under the direction” of the Chinese government.
Censorship is “a loaded term,” TikTok’s brief said. In any case, the brief added, “the petitioners categorically deny that TikTok has ever removed or restricted content in other countries at the request of China.”
