The Supreme Court issued its opinion concerning the looming TikTok ban.

The high court has decided to uphold the ban which goes into effect by Sunday.

The parent company, ByteDance, must divest from TikTok by Sunday or it will be shut down. The app has more than 170 million users in the U.S., The Associated Press reported.

CNN reported that the opinion was unsigned but there were no dissents.

According to ScotusBlog, “There is no doubt that . . . TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

“For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”

A separate, concurring opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, read that she sees “no reason to assume without deciding that the Act implicates the First Amendment because our precedent leaves no doubt that it does.”

While Justice Neil Gorsuch also concurred, writing according to ScotusBlog, that it is all happening quickly and that the “Court rightly refrains from endorsing the government’s asserted interest in preventing the ‘covert manipulation of content’ as a justification for the law before us.” But he added, the law “seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the President as an adversary of our Nation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information”

So what happens on Sunday?

If there is no sale, which, according to AP, doesn’t seem imminent, the app will still be on users’ devices for those who already have it. New users however will not be able to download it. Eventually, the app will stop working for everyone.

It still may not come to that. President Joe Biden said he would not enforce the law in the final hours of his presidency before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday. Trump has said he wants to negotiate a solution, the AP reported.

There is also a 90-day pause on the shutdown written into the law if there is progress in finding a buyer. A sale would be difficult, according to ByteDance’s lawyer because Chinese law prevents the sale of the algorithm that makes TikTok so successful. It allows people to watch hundreds of videos in half an hour and has been designed to be addictive, harming kids’ mental health, according to lawsuits filed in about a dozen states, the AP reported.

That same algorithm, according to government officials, can be manipulated by Chinese officials to determine what content is shown on the platform and that manipulation is not easily detected, according to the AP. But TikTok said U.S. officials have not given any evidence that the Chinese government has tried to manipulate the content or used it to gather data on millions of Americans.

Read the decision below or here:

Check back for more on this developing story.

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