Courtroom View
The room, one moment at a time
The same case as the Chronological View, drawn as the room it happened in. Move the line along the bar, or step with Previous and Next, and the room changes with the moment: who was in it, and which parts of it stood empty.
- In the room
- By video
- In the case, not recorded in the room
- ?About this part of the room
In the room
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Justice
Amy Coney Barrett
Asked TikTok’s lawyer: “The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to divest.” Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. p. 59 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Neil M. Gorsuch
Asked about the secret evidence, and whether one of the government’s worries was “a pretty paternalistic point of view.” Agreed with the result only, in a short opinion of his own.
Seating chart · Tr. pp. 96, 123 · Gorsuch, J. p. 1 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Sonia Sotomayor
Got the Solicitor General to agree that if TikTok stayed up on January 19, the law would be broken. Joined all but one part of the opinion, writing that the First Amendment plainly applies.
Seating chart · Tr. p. 171 · Sotomayor, J. p. 1 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Clarence Thomas
Asked the first question of the day: “Exactly what is TikTok’s speech here?” Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. p. 6 · Journal p. 269
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The Chief Justice
John G. Roberts, Jr.
The Chief Justice, in the center seat. Asked whether the Court was “supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government.”
Seating chart · Tr. pp. 8–9 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Asked whether ByteDance had “devised this magical algorithm” that no one else could match. Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. pp. 111–112 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Elena Kagan
Asked what “covert” added, since “everybody does know now that there’s China behind it.” Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. p. 123 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Brett M. Kavanaugh
Called the data collection “a huge concern for the future of the country,” and asked what would happen on January 19. Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. pp. 55–57 · Journal p. 269
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Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson
The most junior justice, at the far right. Asked whether this was “really a right of association case.” Didn’t write separately.
Seating chart · Tr. p. 65 · Journal p. 269
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For TikTok, in the D.C. Circuit
Andrew J. Pincus
Argued for TikTok and ByteDance in the D.C. Circuit in September 2024. That argument was in another courthouse, so he’s drawn here only as part of the case.
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For TikTok and ByteDance
Noel J. Francisco
Of Jones Day, and Solicitor General in President Trump’s first term. At the table while the others argued.
Tr. p. 2 · Jones Day, Francisco
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At the lectern
Noel J. Francisco
Argued first, for about an hour, and came back for the rebuttal at the end.
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For the creators
Jeffrey L. Fisher
Of O’Melveny & Myers. He argued for the creators in both courts. At the table while the others argued.
Tr. p. 2 · Creators’ brief cover · Minutes, Sept 16, 2024
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At the lectern
Jeffrey L. Fisher
Argued second, sharing the challengers’ side under the Court’s order for divided argument.
Tr. pp. 73–117 · Docket, No. 24-656
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For the government, in the D.C. Circuit
Daniel Tenny
Of the Justice Department’s appellate staff. Argued in the D.C. Circuit, in another courthouse.
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For the government
Elizabeth B. Prelogar
The Solicitor General. At the table while the challengers argued.
Tr. p. 2
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At the lectern
Elizabeth B. Prelogar
Argued for the government, for nearly an hour.
Tr. pp. 117–172
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The bar section
About 90 new members
Before the argument the Court admitted about 90 lawyers to its bar, each moved in by a member. The seats just past the bronze railing are kept for members of the Court’s bar.
Journal pp. 269–272 · Visitor’s guide
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The lectern
Right in front of the Chief Justice
Each lawyer stands here in turn. A white light on it means five minutes are left, and a red one means time is up. The Court gave the case two hours, and it ran about two and a half.
Visitor’s guide · Tr. pp. 4, 178
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The challengers’ table
Drawn by the page’s rule
Four seats at each table. With the argument divided, the Court allows one co-counsel for each lawyer who argues, and they aren’t named in any source found. Which table each side used isn’t either, so the challengers are drawn on the left, as on every page here.
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The government’s table
Up to four
The Solicitor General and up to three others from her office. The others aren’t named in any source found.
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The Clerk
Not recorded
The Clerk of the Court, or someone from the Clerk’s office, sits to the left of the bench and swears in new members of the bar. The Court doesn’t record who sat in this chair that day.
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The Marshal
Not recorded
The Marshal, or a deputy, sits to the right of the bench, calls the Court to order and keeps time. Who sat in this chair that day isn’t recorded.
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The bar section
Not recorded
Seats for members of the Court’s bar, just past the bronze railing. Who sat in them isn’t recorded.
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The press
Not recorded
Reporters sit here, to the left of the bench. Which ones were in the room isn’t recorded in any source found.
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The justices’ guests
Not recorded
Benches for the justices’ guests, seated by the seniority of the justice who invited them, with chairs in front for retired justices and officers of the Court. Nobody who sat here is recorded.
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The public
Not recorded
Seats for the public, given out to people waiting in line. No source found names anyone who sat in them that day.
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The bench
Not here yet
Until December 2024 the case was in the D.C. Circuit, a different court in a different building. It reached this Court on December 16, 2024.
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The bench
A different case now
This Court’s case closed on February 18, 2025. Tan v. Trump, the case about the sale, is in the D.C. Circuit, and no hearing has been held in it.
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The bench
Deciding on paper
The justices are in the case, but this was a filing or a written order, or it happened outside court. The ruling of January 17, 2025 was released, not read from the bench. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
Journal p. 313
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The lectern
Not in use
Where the lawyers stand to argue. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The challengers’ table
Empty
Where TikTok’s and the creators’ lawyers sit. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The government’s table
Empty
Where the government’s lawyers sit. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The Clerk
Not in use
Where the Clerk of the Court sits. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The Marshal
Not in use
Where the Marshal sits. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The public
Empty
Seats for the public. Nothing was heard in court on this date.
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The bench
Empty: no case yet
Where the nine justices sit, the Chief Justice in the middle. On this date there was no case yet.
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The lectern
Empty: no case yet
Where the lawyers stand to argue. On this date there was no case yet.
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The challengers’ table
Empty: no case yet
Where the side that brought the case sits. It is always drawn on the left here. On this date there was no case yet.
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The government’s table
Empty: no case yet
Where the side answering the case sits. On this date there was no case yet.
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The public
Empty: no case yet
Seats for the public. On this date there was no case yet.
Days in court
- Sept 16, 2024 Argued in the D.C. Circuit before Chief Judge Srinivasan and Judges Rao and Ginsburg. The court opened at 9:33 a.m., and this was the second of two cases that morning. Minutes, Sept 16, 2024 · Argument audio
- Jan 10, 2025 The Court sits at 10 a.m., admits new members to its bar, and calls the case at 10:08. Noel Francisco argues first, for TikTok and ByteDance. Journal pp. 269–272 · Tr. p. 4
- Jan 10, 2025 Jeffrey Fisher argues second, for the creators. Tr. p. 73
- Jan 10, 2025 Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argues for the government. Tr. p. 117
- Jan 10, 2025 Francisco’s rebuttal. The case is submitted at 12:38 p.m. Tr. pp. 172, 178
Notes
How this was made, and what it leaves out
Source
Built from the record of the two courts: the dockets, the briefs, the sworn declarations in the appendix, the D.C. Circuit’s opinion of December 6, 2024, the Supreme Court’s opinion of January 17, 2025, and the transcript of the argument on January 10, 2025. Then the law itself, the President’s orders in the Federal Register, and the filings in Tan v. Trump, read through the archive of federal court records on CourtListener. Each side is described in its own words, in court or in its own briefs.
Words spoken in the Supreme Court are quoted from the Court’s own transcript and cited by its page. The D.C. Circuit doesn’t post transcripts, so its argument is described, not quoted, with a link to the court’s recording. What happened outside the courts after the ruling is cited to the orders themselves where there are any, and to reporting where there aren’t.
Docket, No. 24-656 · Docket, No. 24-1113 · Opinion · Transcript
Two cases, one ruling
Two cases were heard together the whole way. TikTok and ByteDance’s is No. 24-1113 in the D.C. Circuit and No. 24-656 in the Supreme Court. The creators’ is No. 24-1130 and No. 24-657, Firebaugh v. Garland. A third petition, BASED Politics’, No. 24-1183, was joined to them in the D.C. Circuit. One opinion in each court decided them all.
Other challenges to the same law are left out. One by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and two others, No. 24-1316, was filed in October 2024, and the government asked the court to set it aside while this one was decided.
Docket, No. 24-657 · Order of Jun 18, 2024 · D.C. Cir. opinion p. 1
The case after the case
The Supreme Court’s case is over. It sent its judgment down on February 18, 2025, and the D.C. Circuit closed the case ten days later. What happened to the law after that, the orders not to enforce it, the sale and the new company, happened outside both courts, and these pages say so card by card.
Then in March 2026 a new case was filed under the same law, Tan v. Trump, No. 26-1047 in the D.C. Circuit. Two software engineers who own stock in Alphabet and Meta brought it, and later a former employee of a ByteDance company, against President Trump and the Attorney General. It says the sale isn’t the one the law demands. It’s still open. These pages show it as far as its record goes, with what each side says marked as what that side says.
Judgment issued · Mandate, Feb 28, 2025 · Docket, No. 26-1047 · Amended petition ¶¶ 13–15
What this is not
Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict. The Supreme Court upheld the law as it applies to TikTok and the creators. It didn’t decide whether the 2026 sale meets the law, and no court has yet. What the challengers in Tan v. Trump say about the deal is reported as their claim, and the President’s findings about it as his findings.
The government also filed classified evidence that TikTok never saw. Both courts said they decided without it, and these pages leave it out. Where the record doesn’t reach, these pages say so and stop.
Opinion p. 13 n. 3 · D.C. Cir. opinion p. 64
Tell me what I got wrong
If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.
No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.
Record reviewed through October 23, 2026. Nothing filed after that date is reflected here.
Terms
Plain English
Words these pages use because the courts use them. The case went through two courts, the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, and a few words only matter after the ruling, in the case that came after it.
The courts
- D.C. Circuit
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Washington. The law sends every challenge to it first, and to no other court.
- Panel
- The three judges of an appeals court who hear a case or a motion. The D.C. Circuit has about a dozen judges, and different panels handle different steps.
- Merits panel
- The panel that will decide a case itself, as opposed to the ones that handle motions along the way.
- Attorney General
- The head of the Justice Department. The law gives this office alone the job of enforcing it, which is why the case is named after one.
- Solicitor General
- The lawyer who argues the federal government’s cases in the Supreme Court. Elizabeth Prelogar held the job when this case was argued.
- Per curiam
- Latin for “by the court.” An opinion that no one justice signs, issued in the name of the whole Court.
- Concurring opinion
- A justice who agrees with the result writing separately to give other or extra reasons. Concurring “in the judgment” means agreeing with the result but not the Court’s reasoning.
The paperwork
- Docket
- The court’s numbered list of everything filed in a case. Entry 42 is the forty-second thing filed.
- Petition for review
- How a case under this law starts: a request made straight to the appeals court, with no trial court first.
- Exclusive jurisdiction
- Being the only court allowed to hear a kind of case. The law gave that to the D.C. Circuit.
- Consolidated
- Separate cases joined so they’re briefed, argued and decided together.
- Brief
- A side’s written argument to the court.
- Amicus brief
- A brief from someone who isn’t a party, a “friend of the court,” giving the court a view of the case.
- Declaration
- A written statement a witness signs under penalty of perjury. There was no trial here, so the evidence was mostly declarations.
- Record
- Everything a court has in front of it to decide a case: the filings, the declarations, the evidence.
- Classified evidence
- Material the government keeps secret for national security. It filed some here for the judges alone, which the other side never got to see or answer.
- Special master
- Someone a court appoints to help with a task. TikTok asked for one with a security clearance to review the secret evidence.
How the case moved
- Application
- A request to the Supreme Court for emergency help before it has taken a case. Here, to pause the law before it took effect.
- Injunction
- A court order stopping something. One “pending review” pauses a law while a higher court looks at the case.
- Certiorari
- The Supreme Court agreeing to hear a case. Here it treated TikTok’s emergency applications as requests for it and granted them two days later.
- Question presented
- The exact question the Supreme Court agrees to answer. Here there was one: does the law, as applied to TikTok and the creators, violate the First Amendment.
- As applied
- A challenge to how a law works on the people bringing it, not to every possible use of it. The Supreme Court looked only at the part of the law that names TikTok.
- Oral argument
- The time the lawyers spend answering the judges’ questions in court. No witnesses, no new evidence and no jury.
- Divided argument
- Two lawyers splitting one side’s time. TikTok’s lawyer and the creators’ lawyer shared the challengers’ side.
- Rebuttal
- The few minutes the side that brought the case gets at the end, to answer the other side.
- Mandate
- The formal order that closes an appeal and makes the decision final in the court below.
- Moot
- No longer a live question, so there’s nothing left for a court to decide.
The law
- Divestiture
- Selling off a business, or enough of it that the seller no longer controls it.
- Qualified divestiture
- A sale the President finds ends a foreign adversary’s control and leaves no “operational relationship” with ByteDance. Only that lifts the law’s ban.
- Operational relationship
- The tie the law says can’t survive the sale, “including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing.”
- Foreign adversary
- A country the law treats as one: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
- App stores and hosting
- What the law actually forbids, which is offering the app in an app store or hosting it. So it binds companies like Apple, Google and Oracle, not TikTok’s users.
- Civil penalty
- A fine, not a crime. The law sets it at up to $5,000 for each US user reached through a violation.
- The one extension
- The law let the President add up to 90 days, once, if he told Congress a sale was in sight and showed binding agreements. No President used it.
- The general track
- The law’s second route, which lets the President name other apps controlled by a foreign adversary later. TikTok was named in the law itself.
- Recommendation algorithm
- The software that picks which video each user sees next on the “For You” feed. ByteDance owns it, and it’s developed and maintained in China.
- Executive order
- A written order from the President to the executive branch, published in the Federal Register.
- Non-enforcement
- The executive branch choosing not to bring cases under a law, here on the President’s orders. The law itself stays on the books.
- CFIUS
- The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the federal panel that reviews foreign purchases of US businesses for security risks.
- National security agreement
- A contract setting the security conditions a company operates under. TikTok’s draft ran about 90 pages and was never signed.
- Project Texas
- TikTok’s plan to keep US users’ data in the United States, stored with Oracle and run by a separate US company. TikTok says it spent more than $2 billion on it.
- IEEPA
- The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the 1977 law President Trump used for his 2020 ban. Courts found it couldn’t reach this kind of communication.
The free-speech test
- First Amendment
- The part of the Constitution that bars the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.” Courts check laws that burden speech with one of a few tests.
- Assume without deciding
- A court treating something as true for the sake of argument, because the answer wouldn’t change the result, and leaving the real question open.
- Heightened scrutiny
- Any of the stricter tests a court uses when a law burdens speech, instead of just asking whether the law is reasonable.
- Strict scrutiny
- The hardest test. The government needs a compelling reason and the narrowest way of getting there. Most laws that get it fail.
- Intermediate scrutiny
- The middle test. The government needs an important reason that isn’t about suppressing speech, and a law that doesn’t burden much more speech than it has to.
- Content-based
- Aimed at what is said, its topic, idea or message. A content-based law gets strict scrutiny.
- Content-neutral
- Applying whatever is said, like a limit on how loud a speaker can be. A content-neutral law gets intermediate scrutiny.
- Singling out a speaker
- A law aimed at one speaker. Courts look harder when that’s a way of getting at what the speaker says.
- Tailoring
- Whether a law fits its reason, covering what the problem needs and not much more.
- Less restrictive alternative
- Another way of meeting the same goal that burdens less speech. If one would work as well, the law can fail.
- Underinclusive
- Covering too little of the problem a law claims to fix, which can suggest the stated reason isn’t the real one.
- Deference
- A court giving weight to another branch’s judgment, here Congress’s predictions about national security.
- Covert content manipulation
- The government’s second reason: that China could secretly have ByteDance change what Americans see on TikTok. The Supreme Court didn’t rest on it.
The other claims
- Equal protection
- The Constitution’s promise that the government won’t treat people differently without a good enough reason.
- Bill of attainder
- A law that punishes a named person or group without a trial. The Constitution forbids Congress to pass one.
- Taking
- The government seizing private property, which the Constitution allows only with fair payment.
The case after the case
- Standing
- The right to bring a case at all. A challenger has to show a real injury of their own, caused by what they’re challenging, that a court could fix.
- Deadline to sue
- The time limit for bringing a case, also called a statute of limitations. This law allows 90 days after the government action being challenged.
- Motion to dismiss
- Asking a court to end a case without deciding who is right, for a reason like filing too late or having no standing.
- Ripe
- Ready for a court. A challenge to something that hasn’t happened yet comes too early.
- Pseudonym
- A made-up name, here “John Doe,” that a court lets a party use to keep their identity off the public record.
- Certified index
- The government’s official list of what’s in the record behind the decision being challenged. Briefing usually follows it.
- Motion to govern
- The parties’ proposal to the court for how a case should go on from here.
- FOIA
- The Freedom of Information Act, which lets anyone ask a federal agency for its records, and sue if it refuses.
The stamp on a ruling
- Granted
- The court said yes to the request on this card, whichever side made it.
- Denied
- The court said no to the request on this card.
- Affirmed
- The court above agreed with the court below and left its ruling as it was.
- Referred
- The court didn’t decide the request yet. It passed it on to the judges who will decide the whole case.