TikTok v. Garland

TikTok was a social-media platform with over 170 million users in the United States and 1 billion users worldwide. An American company, TikTok Inc. (plaintiff), operated TikTok in the United States. However, TikTok Inc.’s parent company was ByteDance Ltd. (plaintiff), a privately held company operating in China. ByteDance owned, developed, and maintained TikTok’s algorithm, which used users’ interactions with the platform to tailor content recommendations. Chinese law required ByteDance to cooperate with Chinese government intelligence work and allow the government to access and control private data held by ByteDance. In 2020, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring ByteDance to divest from property that enabled or supported ByteDance’s operation of TikTok in the United States, citing national-security concerns. ByteDance negotiated with the United States government (defendant) to resolve the matter, but the parties never reached an agreement. In 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which prohibited companies in the United States from providing services to distribute, maintain, or update foreign-adversary-controlled applications in the United States. The act exempted applications that had undergone a president-approved divestiture from the foreign adversary’s control. In designating foreign-adversary-controlled applications, the act specifically referenced TikTok. ByteDance, TikTok Inc., and TikTok creators (collectively, the challengers) (plaintiffs) challenged the act in federal court, arguing that the act essentially banned TikTok in the United States and burdened First Amendment interests including content moderation, content generation, and access to a particular medium of expression. The court rejected the challenge, concluding that the act was narrowly tailored to serve national-security interests. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether the act, as applied to the challengers, violated the First Amendment.