TikTok filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court on Monday seeking to delay a law that would ban the video sharing platform nationwide if TikTok doesn’t divest from its Chinese parent company. 

The company’s application asks the court to put the Jan. 19 divest-or-ban deadline on hold until the justices resolve TikTok’s First Amendment claims on their normal docket. 

“The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration. This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote in the application. 

TikTok brought its fight to the justices after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the company’s legal challenge to the law and declined to delay the deadline until TikTok exhausts its appeal. 

TikTok has claimed the law violates the free speech rights of both the company itself and its content creators. The lower court rejected those claims and several other constitutional arguments TikTok mounted. 

By default, the company’s Supreme Court application will go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals arising from the D.C. Circuit. Roberts could act on the application alone or refer it to the full court for a vote. 

The court rarely grants emergency relief. Of the more than two dozen emergency appeals resolved by the full court so far this term, only two have been successful, according to The Hill’s analysis of the court’s docket. 

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