Thu. Jan 9th, 2025

A U.S. law that would force the Chinese parent company of social media giant TikTok to either sell the service or face a U.S. ban is constitutional, a panel of federal appeals judges has ruled. In this 2020 photo illustration, the TikTok app is displayed on an Apple iPhone. (Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Following the passage of a federal law earlier this year that calls for the owners of social media app TikTok to either sell it or be subject to a ban on the app in the U.S., Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares filed an amicus brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to uphold the law.

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, sued the U.S. government over the law, saying it impeded their First Amendment rights, but a federal appeals court recently upheld the law. The high court will hear oral arguments in the appeal case Jan. 10.

“Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the undeniable risks of having their data accessed and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party,” Miyares, a Republican, said in a statement announcing the amicus brief. “The Supreme Court now has the chance to affirm Congress’s authority to protect Americans from foreign threats while ensuring that the First Amendment doesn’t become a tool to defend foreign adversaries’ exploitative practices.”

The brief signed by 22 attorneys general was filed the same day President-elect Donald Trump asked the nation’s high court to extend the law’s Jan. 19 divestment deadline to give his administration “the opportunity to seek a negotiated resolution of these questions.” Trump is set to be sworn in Jan. 20 as the 47th president.

When the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was introduced in March, members of Virginia’s congressional delegation supported it. Democratic U.S. Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Bobby Scott said the measure would protect Americans against foreign digital threats, while U.S. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who co-chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, supported the House’s action against TikTok.

In December 2023, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order banning the use of TikiTok “on any government-issued devices, including state-issued cell phones, laptops, or other devices capable of connecting to the internet except for public safety purposes.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued a similar directive a year earlier. In December 2022, he told the state’s Department of Administration, which oversees computer and internet services in use across much of state government — but not all — to block the app from devices it manages.

Miyares co-led the amicus brief alongside Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. Attorneys general in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah also signed on in support.

On Monday, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said he and the other attorneys general who have signed on are concerned not only about national security risks from TikTok’s collection of Americans’ data but also the app’s danger to children.

“TikTok is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party, an enemy of the United States, so its operations in the U.S. pose a serious threat to our national security. The First Amendment does not protect a platform that allows the CCP to exploit Americans’ data and undermine our freedoms,” Wilson said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the incoming Trump administration to protect not only our national security but our children.”

SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.  

Like the SC Daily Gazette, Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.

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