WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court’s nine justices heard arguments on Friday in a challenge by TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance to a law that would force a sale or ban the widely used short-video app by Jan. 19 on national security grounds.
Here are some quotes by the justices and lawyers in the case from the arguments.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS
“Counsel (addressed to Tiktok’s lawyer), you began by saying this is a U.S. company operating in the United States. But the ultimate company that controls it, ByteDance, was found by Congress, and I’ll quote this, ‘to be subject to Chinese laws that require it to assist or cooperate with the Chinese’s government’s intelligence work,’ and to ensure that the Chinese government has the power to access and control private data that the company holds. So are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?”
JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH
“Just on the data collection interest, I think Congress and the president were concerned that China was accessing information about millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans – including teenagers, people in their 20s – that they would use that information over time to develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people, people who a generation from now will be working in the FBI or the CIA or in the State Department. Is that not a realistic assessment by Congress and the president of the risks here?”
JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN
“I was trying to think of whether there’s a historical analog here, and this is what I came up with, and you (the Biden administration lawyer) can tell me whether it’s fallacious. You know, in the mid-20th century, we were very concerned about the Soviet Union and what the Soviet Union was doing in this country. And the Communist Party of the United States at that time was integrally attached to the Communist International (Comintern), which was essentially a Soviet operation, right? So, if Congress had said, ‘Well, it’s very nice, we can have the Communist Party USA, but it has to divest, it has to completely divorce itself from the Comintern and from any international ties that it has,’ do you think that that would have been absolutely fine?”
U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL ELIZABETH PRELOGAR
“The Chinese government’s control of TikTok poses a grave threat to national security. No one disputes the PRC (People’s Republic of China) seeks to undermine U.S. interests by amassing vast quantities of sensitive data about Americans and by engaging in covert influence operations. And no one disputes that the PRC pursues those goals by compelling companies like ByteDance to secretly turn over data and carry out PRC directives. Those realities mean that the Chinese government could weaponize TikTok at any time to harm the United States.”
“TikTok collects unprecedented amounts of personal data. And … it’s not just about the 170 million American users but also about their non-user contacts who may not even be engaging with the platform. That data would be incredibly valuable to the PRC. For years, the Chinese government has sought to build detailed profiles about Americans – where we live and work, who our friends and co-workers are, what our interests are and what our vices are. TikTok’s immense data set would give the PRC a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment and espionage. On top of that, the Chinese government’s control over TikTok gives it a potent weapon for covert influence operations.”
NOEL FRANCISCO, LAWYER FOR TIKTOK AND BYTEDANCE
“Under the act, one of America’s most popular speech platforms will shut down in nine days. That shouldn’t happen for three reasons. First, TikTok incorporated as a U.S. company, speaking in the United States. The act requires it to go dark unless ByteDance executes a qualified divestiture. Whether you call that a ban or a divestiture, one thing is clear: It’s a burden on TikTok’s speech, so the (U.S. Constitution’s) First Amendment applies.”
“Second, the act is content-based from beginning to end. It applies only to social media platforms that have user-generated content, except for business, product and travel reviews. Within that content-based universe, it singles out a single speaker for uniquely harsh treatment, and it does so because the government fears that China could, in the future, indirectly pressure TikTok to disseminate foreign misinformation and propaganda. Finally, the act can’t satisfy any standard of scrutiny. The government has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda. And its fall-back that it seeks merely to prevent covertness makes no sense since that could be addressed with a risk disclosure.”
(Compiled by Reuters staff; Editing by Will Dunham)
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