U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024.
Cheney Orr | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause implementation of a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. on Jan. 19 if the app is not sold by its Chinese parent company.
The court is due to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” wrote D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for U.S. solicitor general. “Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”
The law at the heart of the suit is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a bipartisan measure passed by Congress and subsequently signed into law by President Joe Biden in April.
The law would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban.
Earlier this month, the court decided to hear the case and fast-tracked the schedule for briefing and oral arguments. However, the court punted on TikTok’s request to pause implementation of the ban, leaving just nine days after oral arguments for it to issue an opinion or indefinitely block the law.
Trump, who tried to ban TikTok in 2020 but was blocked by the courts, suggested in Friday’s court filing that he could negotiate a political resolution to the matter before the court needs to rule.
“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” Sauer wrote.
Trump previously met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in December, hours after the president-elect expressed he had a “warm spot” for the app, a reversal from his opposition to it four years ago.
The Justice Department and TikTok also submitted briefs in the case on Friday, mainly rehashing arguments they made before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
That court upheld the law, concluding that the government’s national security justifications for banning the app, including concerns that the Chinese government could access data about American users and manipulate content on the app, were legitimate.
Chinese government officials have consistently rejected the argument that TikTok is a threat to U.S. national security.
In its court filing Friday, the Justice Department defended the law, citing national security concerns that the Chinese government could influence the company.
TikTok, meanwhile, opposed the law, saying in its brief that banning the app would violate free speech rights protected under the First Amendment.
