Two members of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to the CEO’s of TikTok, Apple, and Google, reminding them of their need to comply with the recent court ruling that upheld the ban against TikTok.
Writing to TikTok CEO Shou Chew, the lawmakers said, “The Court held that ‘[t]he First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States'” and “rejected all of TikTok’s constitutional claims.”
“Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party. We urge TikTok to immediately execute a qualified divestiture,” they wrote.
In letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook, the lawmakers said the companies must “take the necessary steps to ensure it can fully comply with this requirement by January 19, 2025.”
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court upheld a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app by January 19 or be banned in the United States. A panel of three judges ruled that Congress has the authority to take action against the social media app, rejecting ByteDance’s arguments concerning the First Amendment.
“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore deny the petitions.”
