In April, US President Joe Biden signed a law requiring the TikTok social network to sell itself off from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, within 90 days of the law's signing. If it doesn't, the US government could ban access to TikTok completely in the country.
A few days later, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the US government, claiming that the signed bill violated Amendment rights. It also claimed that selling off the company was "simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally."
Today, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments for and against the law. CNN reports that due to the law's nature, any court hearing must go directly to an appeals court rather than first being heard in a normal federal court.
The three-judge panel in the appeals court will hear arguments from both TikTok's lawyers and a group of TikTok content makers, who have also filed a lawsuit against the US government on the law. Then, the lawyers for the Biden administration will make their case to the three federal appeals judges.
The US goverment's case is that because TikTok is owned by a China-based company, it poses a national security risk. It claims the Chinese government could get data from everyone who uses TikTok. However, TikTok has denied that it has any connection to the Chinese government
CNN also reported that, according to court filings, a deal was in the works between TikTok and US national security officials to address these security issues. That included giving the US government the right to shut down TikTok if it violated the deal. In the end, the government pulled out of the deal talks in part because it felt it would be hard to detect if TikTok was violating a deal.
After today's hearing, the three judges in the appeals court will have to make a decision. There's no word on how long the panel will take to render its verdict.
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