A looming crisis over digital expression and national security moved closer to a constitutional showdown as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to grant TikTok’s urgent request to halt enforcement of a contentious new law.
That statute orders the platform’s Chinese owner to divest its interest or see the app forcibly removed from US digital marketplaces by January 19. But with Friday’s ruling, TikTok must now pin its hopes on the Supreme Court, the final arbiter that could decide whether the government’s intrusive directive can be put on hold.
We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.
Instead of preserving the status quo, the three-judge appellate panel dismissed the notion of a temporary reprieve, stating that an injunction was “unwarranted.”
The court’s prompt resolution, reached late Friday, allows TikTok and its users an opportunity to seek immediate emergency relief from the nation’s highest court.
The judges’ action came on the heels of last week’s unanimous decision against TikTok’s arguments and the app’s subsequent request, made Monday, that the law be stayed until its upcoming Supreme Court appeal could be fully considered. They aimed to secure a decision by December 16, but the appellate court would not oblige.
The panel’s reasoning invoked a stark legal standard, noting that TikTok and its user community “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”
This statement underlined the exceptional burden TikTok faced in attempting to prevent a law—one that critics see as a direct blow to free online discourse—from taking effect.
