TikTok is still on the clock.
Earlier this week, the social media app asked a federal appeals court to issue a temporary injunction on a federal law that would ban the app from the United States. That law, passed with bipartisan support and signed by President Joe Biden in April, would require TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese company or cease U.S. operations.
TikTok's attorneys pleaded with the D.C. Circuit Court this week, saying the court should issue a stay of the ban so that the problem wouldn't be forced in front of the Supreme Court "over the holidays."
“Out of respect for the Supreme Court’s vital role, this Court should grant an interim injunction that enables a more deliberate and orderly process,” they wrote, per CNN.
The court wasn't moved. In an unsigned order, the judges wrote that issuing such a stay on a law they had just found to be constitutional was unprecedented.
"The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court," they wrote.
They also called the stay "unwarranted" and noted that such a reprieve would go against the "deliberate choice" to set the effective date 270 days from the law's passage. The deadline for a sale or ban is January 19.
Biden has the ability to grant a one-time extension of the sale deadline, though that seems unlikely. His Department of Justice argued against the temporary stay this week.
