Donald Trump filed a friend-of-the-court brief in an upcoming Supreme Court case in which the president-elect asks the court to delay enacting a new law banning TikTok in the United States unless the Chinese do so. sell.

The new law will take effect on Jan. 19, the day before Trump is sworn in as president, and must be in effect when it takes effect.

Newsweek sought email comment on Monday from the Trump transition team.

The Supreme Court, to which Trump has appointed three conservative members, can simply reject his request to delay enactment of the new law. This could lead to the first primary clash between Trump and the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative primary.

On December 18, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear social media platform TikTok’s challenge to a new law that will force its Chinese parent company to sell the popular social media site.

The new law will give parent company ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, given Congress’ concerns about the Chinese government harvesting U.S. users’ information.

The Supreme Court is hearing the case on an expedited calendar, with oral arguments on January 10.

TikTok asked for a postponement of the case. In his briefing, Trump strongly endorsed TikTok’s request.

Trump’s amicus, or friend-of-the-court brief, is an expert opinion typically submitted for one side of a legal dispute.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, told Newsweek that the Supreme Court would likely reject Trump’s friend-of-the-court brief.

Gillers said that under Supreme Court rules, if Trump’s brief is rejected, he can simply ask the Justice Department to file his own brief with the court two days later.

Writing on the Substack blog site on December 30, Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., stated that Trump’s intervention could cause long-term damage to the relationship between the presidency and the Supreme Court.

Vladeck objected to Trump’s Supreme Court brief, written by John Sauer, Trump’s nominee for solicitor general.

Vladeck wrote that the court could simply object to Sauer’s “ridiculous boasts” in which he calls Trump “powerful,” a “commander” and a “resounding success. “

Newsweek asked Sauer by email on Monday.

Law professor Stephen Vladeck wrote in Substack, “This kind of selfish, navel-gazing in government reports. . . It will have significant (and, in my view, particularly damaging) long-term implications for the government with the government. Court. “

Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek: “Given TikTok’s legal and political arguments for a stay, I suspect the Court will stay enforcement rather than rule on the merits in an expedited manner. But the Court will more likely do so by granting TikTok’s request to avoid expedited scrutiny than by taking a position on Trump’s political arguments.

Law professor Stephen Gillers told Newsweek: “If the court does not want to hear it now, they can reject your application. If this is the case, you can ask your Ministry of Justice to give its opinion two days later. I doubt the court will will refuse to listen to what the President has to say on this issue, before or after he takes office. “

The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on January 10, which will most likely give an intelligent indication of where the justices stand on those issues.

The court may have decided by then whether it will accept Trump’s brief.

Sean O’Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. He has covered human rights and extremism extensively. Sean joined Newsweek in 2023 and previously worked for The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, Vice and others from the Middle East. He specialized in human rights issues in the Arabian Gulf and conducted a three-month investigation into labor rights abuses for The New York Times. He was previously based in New York for 10 years. He is a graduate of Dublin City University and is a qualified New York attorney and Irish solicitor. You can get in touch with Sean by emailing [email protected]. Languages: English and French.