A federal appeals court said Wednesday it will hear oral arguments in December on the government's appeal of an order that blocked a ban on Apple Inc and Alphabet's Google offering TikTok for download in U.S. app stores.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington on September 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 nominated by previous Democratic presidents.
The Trump administration last week extended to Friday a deadline for TikTok parent ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. assets. The Trump administration alleges TikTok poses national security concerns and threat personal data. TikTok, which has over 100 million U.S. users, denies the allegation.
The administration previously granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of the order issued in August. President Donald Trump on August 14 directed ByteDance to divest the app's U.S. assets within 90 days.
Under pressure from the U.S. government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok's U.S. assets into a new entity.
The U.S. Treasury on November 26 said it had given a new 7-day-extension to TikTok's parent ByteDance for selling TikTok's American business, according to a court filing.
U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on October 30 blocked another aspect of a Commerce Department order scheduled to take effect November 12 that would have effectively barred TikTok from operating in the United States.
Beetlestone enjoined the agency from barring data hosting within the United States for TikTok, content delivery services and other technical transactions.
(With input from Reuters)
