This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

PAFACA makes it unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform TikTok, unless U. S. operation of the platform is severed from Communist Chinese control. TikTok is a social media platform that has accumulated over 170 million users in the United States and more than one billion worldwide. Those users are prolific content creators and viewers. In 2023, U. S. TikTok users uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos, which were in turn viewed more than 13 trillion times around the world. Each interaction a user has on TikTok-watching a video, following an account, leaving a comment-enables the recommendation system to further tailor a personalized content feed. TikTok promotes or demotes certain content to advance its business objectives and other goals. TikTok is operated in the United States by TikTok Inc., an American company incorporated and headquartered in California. TikTok Inc.’s parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company that has operations in Communist China. ByteDance Ltd. is subject to Communist Chinese laws that require it to “assist or cooperate” with the Communist Chinese Government’s “intelligence work” and to ensure that the Communist Chinese Government has “the power to access and control private data” the company holds. In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Ps' platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to further the interests of the Communist Chinese Government. The President prohibited certain “transactions” involving ByteDance Ltd. or its subsidiaries. Federal courts enjoined the prohibitions before they took effect, finding that they exceeded the Executive Branch’s authority. President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests and rights in any property “used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived from” U. S. TikTok users. Ps filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the order. Then Congress enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. “ByteDance Ltd.” or “TikTok” is specifically designated as a “foreign adversary controlled application” under the application. The Act exempts a foreign adversary-controlled application if the application undergoes a “qualified divestiture.” A “qualified divestiture” is one that the President determines will result in the application “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” Ps filed petitions for review in the D. C. Circuit, challenging the constitutionality of the Act in relation to the First Amendment. The D. C. Circuit held that the Act does not violate Ps’ First Amendment rights. After first concluding that the Act was subject to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment, the court assumed without deciding that strict, rather than intermediate, scrutiny applied. The court held that the Act satisfied that standard, finding that the Government’s national security justifications-countering China’s data collection and covert content manipulation efforts-were compelling, and that the Act was narrowly tailored to further those interests.

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