US court rejects Tiktok request to temporarily halt pending US ban

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a ban.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The companies warned that without court action the law will “shut down TikTok — one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”