TikTok grilled in appeals court as judges consider challenge to sale-or-ban bill

TikTok faced sharp questions from a US appeals court on Monday as the company scrambles to block a law that will force China-based ByteDance to sell the video-sharing app by Jan.19 or face a total ban.A TikTok lawyer argued in front of a three-judge panel that the law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was a violation of the First Amendment.“The law before this court is unprecedented, and its effect would be staggering,” TikTok’s outside attorney Andrew Pincus said during the closely-watched hearing.“For the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific US speaker banning its speech and the speech of 170 million Americans,” Pincus added.The feds, meanwhile, doubled down on their argument that the risk of the Chinese government manipulating the app poses an unacceptable national security risk.TikTok, headed by CEO Shou Chew, and the DOJ have asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to make a decision by Dec.

6.The two-hour hearing, which also included testimony from TikTok creators who say a ban would hurt their livelihoods, ended without a clear indication as to which way the panel would rule.However, the judges appeared unconvinced by key elements of TikTok’s position, legal experts told The Post.At one point, Judge Sri Srinivasan pushed back on TikTok’s Pincus by pointing out the case hinged on the app’s China-based ownership.

He raised the hypothetical question of whether Congress would be allowed to ban a foreign adversary’s ownership of a media outlet within the US during a time of war.Elsewhere, Judge Neomi Rao asserted that TikTok was relying on a “very strange framework” to overturn the law by essentially ignoring the fact that Congress had “actually passed a law” and instead treating it as if it were a federal agency.“I had expected TikTok to face an uphill battle at this hearing, but the questioning they faced was much more critical than anticipated,” said Gus Hurwitz, a senior fel...