The court heard oral arguments on TikTok’s bid to block a law that would lead to its ban in the U.S. starting Jan. 19 if it isn’t sold by its Chinese owner.
The law in question bans social media (of a sufficient size) being owned by an entity in a geopolitical rival nation.
Its relation to Citizens’ United is pretty thin, really only sharing the concept of a corporation’s First Amendment rights. But there’s a lot of reason to doubt Bytedance’s First Amendment argument holds legal water here, as the law is regulating business operation — not speech.
The only freedom restricted in the law is that of Bytedance to own a social media platform in the US. I find it difficult to define that freedom as “speech”. Citizens’ United dealt with a company’s freedom to fund political campaigns — which is at least easier to define as “speech”.
… the reasoning why they’re taking away that freedom is the important part you’re purposely ignoring.
You can handwave away any right the same way you’re doing by ignoring how this is government singling out a company for a behavior based on perceived political messaging
It’s not perceived political messaging that’s at issue, but the potential for sensitive national security data collection by an adversary. That’s what made TikTok an explicit target of the law.
For the record, I don’t have a strong opinion either way on whether the law is good or bad (if you think it’s bad, vote against your congresspeople that supported it). I just don’t see TikTok’s legal argument against it as very strong, constitutionally speaking.
The law in question bans social media (of a sufficient size) being owned by an entity in a geopolitical rival nation.
Its relation to Citizens’ United is pretty thin, really only sharing the concept of a corporation’s First Amendment rights. But there’s a lot of reason to doubt Bytedance’s First Amendment argument holds legal water here, as the law is regulating business operation — not speech.
They’re being named for their speech as a business operation, the exact think Cit Un dealt with
The only freedom restricted in the law is that of Bytedance to own a social media platform in the US. I find it difficult to define that freedom as “speech”. Citizens’ United dealt with a company’s freedom to fund political campaigns — which is at least easier to define as “speech”.
… the reasoning why they’re taking away that freedom is the important part you’re purposely ignoring.
You can handwave away any right the same way you’re doing by ignoring how this is government singling out a company for a behavior based on perceived political messaging
It’s not perceived political messaging that’s at issue, but the potential for sensitive national security data collection by an adversary. That’s what made TikTok an explicit target of the law.
For the record, I don’t have a strong opinion either way on whether the law is good or bad (if you think it’s bad, vote against your congresspeople that supported it). I just don’t see TikTok’s legal argument against it as very strong, constitutionally speaking.