The two sides involved in a high-profile Supreme Court fight over a measure that could shut down TikTok submitted their closing written arguments Friday, sharply contesting China’s influence on the site and the role the First Amendment should play in evaluating the law .
Their briefs, filed under an exceptionally shortened schedule set last month by the justices, were part of a high-stakes fight over the government’s insistence that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, sell the app’s U.S. operations or the would close. The Supreme Court, seeking to resolve the case before the statutory deadline of January 19, will consider the arguments in a special session next Friday.
The court’s ruling, which could come this month, will decide the fate of a powerful and pervasive cultural phenomenon that uses a sophisticated algorithm to provide users with a personalized series of short videos. TikTok has become, especially for younger generations, a major source of information and entertainment.
“Rarely, if ever, has the court addressed a free speech case that matters to so many people,” reads a brief filed Friday on behalf of a group of TikTok users. “170 million Americans use TikTok regularly to communicate, entertain 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 briefs made only passing or oblique references to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s unusual request last week that the Supreme Court temporarily block the law so he can address the issue once he takes office.
The legal deadline for selling or shutting down TikTok is January 19, the day before Trump takes office.
“This unfortunate timing,” his brief states, “interferes with President Trump’s ability to manage U.S. foreign policy and pursue a resolution to both protect national security and save a social media platform that provides a vehicle popular for 170 million Americans. exercise their fundamental First Amendment rights.”
The law allows the president to extend the deadline by 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 emphasizes that the First Amendment protects Americans’ access to the speech of foreign adversaries, even if it is propaganda. The alternative to outright censorship, they wrote, is a legal requirement that the source of the speech be disclosed.
“Disclosure is the proven and least restrictive alternative to address a concern that the public is being misled about the source or nature of the speech received, including in foreign affairs and national security contexts,” TikTok’s brief reads.
The user brief echoed the point. “The maximum allowed by our customs and jurisprudence,” it reads, “is the obligation to disclose foreign influence, so that people have complete information to decide what to believe.”
The government said this approach would not work. “Such a blanket and permanent disclosure would be patently ineffective,” Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the U.S. attorney general, wrote Friday.
In a brief filed last week in TikTok v. Garland, n. 24-656, the government asserted that foreign propaganda can be addressed 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 critical communications channels and infrastructure) during the Cold War,” the memo said, “and likewise we do not requires tolerating ownership and control of TikTok by a foreign adversary today.”
User submissions disputed that claim. “Indeed,” the note reads, “the United States tolerated the publication of Pravda – the quintessential tool of Soviet propaganda – in this country at the height of the Cold War.”
TikTok itself said the government was wrong to criticize it for not “outright denying” the claim that “ByteDance engaged in censorship or manipulated content on its platforms at the direction” of the Chinese government.
Censorship is “a loaded term,” TikTok’s brief says. In any case, the note adds, “the signatories openly deny that TikTok has ever removed or restricted content in other countries at China’s request.”