Appeals court to hold December 14 hearing on blocked US TikTok new user ban

A federal appeals court said on Wednesday it will hear oral arguments on Dec. 14 on the government’s appeal of an order that blocked a ban on Apple and Alphabet’s Google offering TikTok for download in US app stores.

US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington on Sept. 27 blocked the Commerce Department order hours before it was to prohibit new downloads of the Chinese-owned short video-sharing app.

The appeals panel consists of Judge Judith Rogers, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins. All three were nominated by previous Democratic presidents.

The Trump administration last week extended to Friday a deadline for Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US assets. The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns as the personal data of US users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has over 100 million US users, denies the allegation.

The administration previously granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of the order issued in August. President Donald Trump on Aug. 14 directed ByteDance to divest the app’s US assets within 90 days.

Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalise a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s US assets into a new entity.