From Bill to Deadline

Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April 2024, folding it into a foreign-aid supplemental package that President Biden signed on 24 April 2024. The law was unusual in a way that generated immediate constitutional commentary: it named ByteDance and TikTok explicitly in its text, rather than establishing a general standard and leaving enforcement to regulators. Under the statute's terms, ByteDance had 270 days from enactment to divest TikTok's US operations or face removal from US app stores and web-hosting services. That deadline fell on 19 January 2025.

The law's mechanism ran through app distribution. Apple and Google were obligated to remove TikTok from their US storefronts if ByteDance remained in control past the deadline; internet hosting providers faced parallel obligations. The statutory definition of a "foreign adversary controlled application" required a covered company — one with a principal in a country of concern — to demonstrate a qualified divestiture, as determined by the President. China was the country of concern specified.

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A phone in an indoor public space, which is where all of this is finally settled.Photo: Faheem Ahamad / Pexels

ByteDance in Court

ByteDance and TikTok filed their challenge in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May 2024. The central argument was a First Amendment one: the law suppressed speech based on the identity of the speaker's owner, without evidence that TikTok's content was itself harmful. A secondary due process argument held that the law denied ByteDance a meaningful opportunity to rebut the national-security findings that animated it — findings made by the executive branch and largely shielded from judicial review by the statute's own terms.

The DC Circuit upheld the law on 6 December 2024, ruling unanimously that the national-security interest the government articulated was sufficiently weighty to survive First Amendment scrutiny, and that the divestiture requirement was a regulation of ownership rather than a regulation of speech. The court found that Congress had acted within its foreign-commerce and national-security powers. ByteDance moved immediately to the Supreme Court.

Chronology

  1. 24 April 2024President Biden signs the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
  2. May 2024ByteDance and TikTok file First Amendment challenge in the DC Circuit
  3. 6 December 2024DC Circuit upholds the law unanimously
  4. 10 January 2025Supreme Court oral argument
  5. 17 January 2025Supreme Court unanimously affirms; TikTok begins going dark
  6. 19 January 2025Statutory deadline; TikTok briefly unavailable in the US
  7. 20 January 2025Trump inauguration; executive order grants ninety-day extension, TikTok restored
  8. ~19 April 2025Extended deadline; no divestiture agreement published as of last available filings

The Supreme Court took the case on an expedited schedule, hearing oral argument on 10 January 2025. On 17 January 2025 — two days before the statutory deadline — the Court unanimously affirmed the DC Circuit ↗, holding that the First Amendment did not bar Congress from requiring divestiture of a platform where the government had presented a sufficient national-security rationale. The opinion, authored without a named individual Justice in the per curiam form, noted the unprecedented nature of the question while declining to find the statute unconstitutional on its face.

After the Deadline

TikTok went dark briefly on the night of 18–19 January 2025, displaying a notice to US users that the service was unavailable. The outage lasted roughly fourteen hours. On 19 January, President-elect Donald Trump — set to be inaugurated the following day — stated publicly that he would issue an executive order extending the compliance deadline by ninety days, a mechanism the statute permitted the President to invoke if the executive certified that a divestiture was in progress and that the extension served the national interest.

Trump signed that executive order on 20 January 2025, the day of his inauguration, granting the ninety-day extension and directing the Attorney General not to enforce the statute during that period. The order neither compelled a sale nor designated a buyer. TikTok restored service to US users that same day.

A hand holds a smartphone outdoors showing the emergency dialer with 112 entered
Also in The Apps: The Streak Mechanic as a Revenue StrategyPhoto: cottonbro studio / Pexels

As of the most recent published filings and executive statements, no divestiture agreement had been finalised before the ninety-day extended deadline of approximately 19 April 2025. The Trump administration indicated it was engaged in negotiations but disclosed no binding term sheet or agreed acquirer. The app remained available in US stores under the executive's non-enforcement posture, leaving the statute's underlying divestiture requirement unresolved — a law that named an app, survived every court challenge, and nonetheless had not yet produced the outcome it mandated.