TikTok ban likely to be upheld by Supreme Court, putting pressure on Trump

The Supreme Court on Friday heard oral arguments in the case involving the future of TikTok in the United States, and a law that could effectively ban the popular app as soon as next week.

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act targets TikTok and will impose harsh civil penalties on app "entities" that carry the service after a Jan.19 deadline. Among several issues the justices considered was whether the law violates the Constitution's free speech protections.

During the over two-hour long argument, justices repeatedly questioned TikTok's head lawyer about the social media platform's ties to the People's Republic of China. And they seemed generally unconvinced by TikTok's main argument, that the law violates the free speech rights of its millions of individual users in the United States.

Still, questions remain about president-elect Donald Trump's willingness to enforce the law once he assumes office, just a day after it goes into effect. If Trump decides not to enforce violations, third-party service providers like Apple and Google will face a dilemma: Whether to follow the letter of the law or put their trust in the new administration's assurances that they can effectively ignore it.

Cornell University law professor Gautam Hans said in a statement that "the consensus that the Court will allow the ban to go into effect seems correct."

"What remains unfortunate is the credulity with which many of the justices treated this law, which clearly implicates free speech rights on underspecified national security grounds," Hans said.

Noel Francisco, the U.S. solicitor general during president-elect Donald Trump's first term, opened the hearing as TikTok's legal representative. He echoed Trump's