Supreme Court Seems Ready To Allow TikTok Ban: Reports

A majority of the Supreme Court justices appeared to be hinting at upholding a law that would ban TikTok in the United States unless China sold it to an American firm.

Justices held more than two hours of oral arguments on Friday.

Many of the justices appeared to view the sell-or-ban law approved by Congress as an effort to regulate the potential foreign control versus a free speech issue, CNN and others reported.

The decision is expected to come quickly because there are nine days before TikTok faces a ban unless ByteDance divests from the popular app.

The U.S. government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and ByteDance strongly deny the claims.

TikTok argues that the law violates its First Amendment rights although justices seemed to question a foreign-controlled company having those rights.

While once supporting the TikTok ban, Trump has flip-flopped on the issue.

Trump's lawyer filed a brief with the Supreme Court last month asking it to pause the law so that he could work on a "political resolution" in the impasse.

A coalition of free speech groups -- including the influential American Civil Liberties Union -- filed a separate brief with the Supreme Court opposing the law, citing censorship concerns.

"Such a ban is unprecedented in our country and, if it goes into effect, will cause a far-reaching disruption in Americans' ability to engage with the content and audiences of their choice online," they said.

In an 11th-hour development on Thursday, U.S. billionaire Frank McCourt, founder of the non-profit Project Liberty, announced that he had put together a consortium to acquire TikTok's US assets from ByteDance.

"We've put forward a proposal to ByteDance," McCourt said. "We look forward to working with ByteDance, President-elect Trump, and the incoming administration to get this deal done."

The AFP contributed to this report.