Gus Hurwitz on TikTok Divestment
ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted by the CBC in a story about TikTok’s challenge of a law that would require it be divested by its Chinese parent. You can read the full piece here.
The case amounts to a clash between two fundamental principles of U.S. law: the First Amendment right to free speech versus the government’s authority to determine national security concerns, said Gus Hurwitz, academic director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School in Philadelphia.
Hurwitz said ByteDance’s position is that the intended effect of the law is to stop the company from speaking to Americans.
“The company is making a pretty straightforward First Amendment-style argument here, that they are a speech platform, that in many ways they are no different from a newspaper, a magazine, any other website,” Hurwitz said in an interview with CBC News.
…”I expect that if the court is going to side with TikTok, we will hear very quickly,” likely next week, Hurwitz said. “If an injunction isn’t immediately issued … I would interpret that silence to mean with very high confidence that the court is going to decide against TikTok.”
…Trump could issue an executive order that postpones enforcement of the law, Hurwitz said, but added that in the long term, it’s unlikely the new president would use up political capital trying to get the law overturned when so many Republican lawmakers are firmly opposed to Chinese ownership of the app.