Attorneys general from Montana and Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to uphold the requirement that social media platform TikTok sever its connection with the Chinese Communist Party or be dissolved, denying a request from President-elect Donald Trump for a delay in doing so until his administration can act to resolve the situation.
Both the attorneys general and Trump filed amicus briefs to the high court on the same day, with Trump asking for a pause on the ban so that he could make executive decisions about the ban after he takes office.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said whistleblower reports show that data from TikTok was shared with the CCP, and that the platform and its parent company ByteDance pose a national security risk to the U.S.
Some of the data shared includes Americans' browsing habits and facial recognition data.
"Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the undeniable risks of having their data accessed and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party," Miyares said in a statement. "Virginians deserve a government that stands firm in protecting their privacy and security.
"The Supreme Court now has the chance to affirm Congress’s authority to protect Americans from foreign threats while ensuring that the First Amendment doesn’t become a tool to defend foreign adversaries’ exploitative practices."
Trump's brief was not in support of either side of the case. Instead, he argued that as president, he had the right to make decisions about the fate of TikTok.
The brief said Trump "has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case" and that the case "presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other."
"As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means," Trump's brief said.
The ban would take effect on January 19 if ByteDance does not sell TikTok to an American company. It has not done so.
Trump will be inaugurated on January 20, one day too late to halt the ban or facilitate any resolution short of the ban.
TikTok has about 150 million active monthly users in America that will not be able to access the platform under the ban.
It also generates an estimated six billion dollars for the American economy that will be lost if the platform is banned.
Younger voters who are more active on TikTok do not want to see it banned, so if Trump can broker a solution to the national security risk, that would be to his credit.
