washington — The Supreme Court said Thursday it may announce an opinion Friday morning, a last-minute addition to the schedule two days before a law banning TikTok takes effect.

A notice on the court's website said "the court may publish opinions on its home page beginning at 10 a.m.," but did not specify which cases it might rule on. "The court will not be the judge."

The law would cut off TikTok's U.S. app store and hosting services if it doesn't cut ties with its Chinese parent company ByteDance by the Jan. 19 deadline.

It seems likely that the Supreme Court will upload the law when it is released hear arguments Last week, in a legal challenge surrounding TikTok, judges appeared sympathetic to the government's argument that China could use TikTok to collect vast amounts of data on U.S. users and spy on them.

Noel Francisco, who defends TikTok and ByteDance, said a potential Supreme Court ruling would have a "huge impact" on the platform's 170 million users in the United States and their right to free speech.

Francisco said last week that if the law was not suspended or overturned by Sunday, "we will be in darkness." "The platform is closed," he said, later clarifying that TikTok will no longer be available in U.S. app stores.

Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar said the "unprecedented amount" of personal data collected by TikTok would provide the Chinese government with "a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment and espionage." She cited several data breaches in the past decade that the United States has blamed on China, including a hack of the Office of Personnel Management that exposed the personal information of millions of federal employees.

"For years, the Chinese government has tried to build a detailed profile of Americans, including where we live and work, who our friends and colleagues are, what our interests are and what our vices are," Pregolar said. ”

In April, Congress quickly passed bipartisan legislation, the Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, as part of the foreign aid package and was signed into law by President Biden. It gave TikTok nine months to sever ties with its Beijing-based parent ByteDance, with a possible 90-day extension if the sale is completed before a January deadline. Without the sale, TikTok would be unable to enter U.S. app stores and web hosting services

Lawmakers and intelligence agencies have long suspected the app's ties to China and believe the concerns are justified because China's national security law requires organizations to cooperate with intelligence collection.

TikTok and ByteDance file lawsuit legal challenge In May, the bill called the law "an extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power" based on "speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation" that would silence millions of American rhetoric.

A federal appeals court ruled in December upholding the law, saying the U.S. government "acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to collect data on Americans." The appeal came a week later. court rejected TikTok sought to delay the law from taking effect pending Supreme Court review.

December. 16. TikTok ask The Supreme Court temporarily suspended the ban, saying it would suffer "immediate and irreparable harm" if the high court did not delay the ban. Two days later, the Supreme Court said it would hear a challenge to the law as soon as possible.