TikTok is heading to the US Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to avoid the ban

TikTok made a last-ditch effort on Monday to continue operating in the US, asking the Supreme Court to temporarily block a law aimed at forcing ByteDance, its China-based parent company, to take down the short-form video app until January 19 or face a ban.

TikTok and ByteDance filed an emergency court request for an injunction to stop the impending ban on the social media app used by about 170 million Americans while they appeal a lower court ruling that upheld the law.

Congress passed the law in April because of national security concerns. The Justice Department has said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses “a national security threat of great depth and scale” because of its access to vast amounts of data about US users, from locations to private messages, and the ability its to secretly manipulate content that Americans see on the app.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on December 6 rejected arguments by the companies and some TikTok users that the law violates their First Amendment rights to free speech. Free speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, criticized the D.C. Circuit’s decision.

The D.C. Circuit on Dec. 13 denied an emergency request by TikTok and ByteDance to temporarily halt the law.

Without an injunction, banning TikTok would make the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors and hurt businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.

Calling itself one of the “most important speech platforms” used in the United States, TikTok has said in legal filings that it poses no immediate threat to national security and that delaying enforcement would allow the Supreme Court to High to review the legality of the ban and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to also evaluate the law.

Trump, who tried unsuccessfully to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, has changed his stance and promised during this year’s presidential race that he would try to save TikTok. Trump takes office on January 20, one day after TikTok’s statutory deadline.

In its ruling, the D.C. Circuit wrote: “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted only to protect that freedom from an adversary foreign nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to collect data on people in the United States.”

TikTok has denied that it has or will ever share US user data, accusing US lawmakers in the lawsuit of furthering speculative concerns and characterizing the ban as a “radical departure from this country’s tradition of protecting an open Internet.” .

TikTok said the shutdown, even temporarily, would destroy its user base, its ability to attract advertisers and to recruit and retain content creators and employee talent.

The DC Circuit’s decision came at a time of rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies after President Biden’s administration imposed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and China responded with a ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony in the United States.

The US law would ban the provision of certain services to TikTok and other apps controlled by foreign adversaries, including through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google, effectively preventing its use of ongoing in the US unless ByteDance removes TikTok by the deadline.

An unfettered ban could open the door to a future crackdown on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump tried to ban WeChat, owned by the Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.