The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok's final legal arguments for why it should not be banned or sold in the United States.
The U.S. government is taking action against the app over its ties to the Chinese state, ties that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have denied.
Supreme Court justices did not grant TikTok's request for an emergency injunction against the law, but will allow TikTok and ByteDance to make their arguments on January 10, nine days before it enters into force. force of the ban.
Earlier in December, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt to overturn the legislation, saying it was “the culmination of far-reaching bipartisan action by Congress and successive presidents.”
The Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the United States, and the decision to take up TikTok's case is significant because it only hears about 100 cases a year out of the more than 7,000 petitions it receives.
The BBC has contacted TikTok for comment. It has previously argued that the attempted ban was unconstitutional because it would impact the free speech of its 170 million users in the country.
But TikTok's future doesn't just depend on the legal process: Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election could also offer it a lifeline.
He met TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday, reported CBS News, the BBC's US partner, citing sources close to the meeting.
Trump has publicly stated that he opposes the ban, although he supported one during his first term as president.
But he won't take office until January 20, the day after the deadline to ban or sell TikTok.
“I have a warm place in my heart for TikTok, because I won the youth by 34 points,” he said Monday during a press conference – even if a majority of 18 to 29 year olds have supported his opponent Kamala Harris.
“There are those who say TikTok has something to do with it,” he said.
But despite Trump's support, Senate Republican Mitch McConnell urged the Supreme Court to reject TikTok's application.
In a brief filed in court, he called the firm's arguments “baseless and ill-founded.”
TikTok, however, benefits from the support of certain civil liberties organizations.
A group of them filed a joint complaint with the court, urging it to block the ban on a platform that they say “millions of people use every day to communicate, learn about the world and s 'express”.
