Marcia Coyle:
Well, actually, the guts of this case is whether the law itself violates the First Amendment speech rights of TikTok USA and the users of TikTok. They’re called creators, those who put content up on TikTok.
And, today, during the arguments, it was very interesting, because there was a lot of skepticism about the first justification, the Chinese government engaging in manipulation, covert manipulation, of content, and whether there actually was a speech interest here to look at.
As some of the justices said, and I will point in particular to Chief John Roberts, he said Congress didn’t care about the expression on TikTok, meaning the speech or the ideas on TikTok. Congress didn’t want to stop TikTok, he said. What Congress wanted to do was to stop China’s control of TikTok. So he was very skeptical that there was a speech right here.
Also, there were justices who did recognize there were speech rights belonging to TikTok USA and the users of TikTok, but they questioned — for example, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether that — those speech impediments or restrictions were really substantial, because the law itself, she said, really was targeted at ByteDance and its divestiture.
