The US Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments over the legality of a statute that would ban or force the sale of TikTok by 19 January in the United States in a case that pits free speech rights against national security concerns over the widely used short-video app owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
TikTok and ByteDance, as well as some users who post content on the app, have challenged a law passed by Congress with strong bipartisan support last year and signed by outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, whose administration is defending it in the case.
A lower court rejected the argument made by the law’s challengers that it violates the US…