Appeals court upholds TikTok ban

A federal appeals court in the United States upheld a law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. in the coming months if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell its stake in the app.

The decision was upheld unanimously by the three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore deny the petitions.”

Back in April, Congress pass the law and gave TikTok nine months to sever ties with ByteDance or lose access to app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S.

President Biden quickly signed the bill into law.

It is unlikely, that President-elect Donald Trump, would help TikTok to retain its stake, as he himself tried to ban the short video app during his first term.

Lawmakers and national security officials have long had suspicions about TikTok’s ties to China.

Officials from both parties have warned that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spy on and collect data from its roughly 170 million American users or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.

The concern is warranted, they have argued, because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence gathering.