Shortly after Biden signed the bill to ban TikTok in April, the company and a consortium of its users retaliated by filing lawsuits accusing the federal government of violating their First Amendment rights. In December, a federal appeals court upheld the ban, leaving TikTok with only one legal avenue to save itself: an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Many of the same arguments were made during Friday’s hearing. Judge Brett Kavanaugh called the government’s data security rationale “strong.” Justices Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch questioned the government’s claim that the app could harbor “covert” Chinese manipulation operations, arguing that TikTok’s algorithm is as opaque as those belonging to other social media companies.

“We all know now that China is behind it,” Kagan said.

Fisher, who represents the creators involved in the case, argued that the judges should not have to answer questions about security, which would be better resolved by broader data privacy legislation.

“If Congress, in this very act, regulated data security in other ways with the data brokers, that’s perfectly permissible,” Fisher told the court. “But the question before you today was narrower. The question is, is this law before you sustainable on safety grounds? And that answer has to be no,” Fisher told the court.

Judges expressed some doubt whether the law actually limits TikTok’s freedom of expression, given the option to opt out. “TikTok can continue to operate on its own algorithm on its own terms, as long as it is not associated with ByteDance,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said.

If the ban goes into effect, Apple and Google will be expected to remove TikTok from the US versions of their app stores, preventing any new downloads from taking place in the country. Internet hosting and data storage providers will also be prohibited from offering their services to the company. Users with TikTok already downloaded on their devices can still have access, at least for a short period after the ban goes into effect. Once removed from app stores, users will not be able to download updates to TikTok, and the app may become harder and harder to use over time. TikTok’s lawyer told the judges that the app would go dark after January 19.

Blake Reid, a technology law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the judges appeared to be targeting TikTok’s corporate structure, leaving the app’s board little time to argue the merits of the data security argument. “I’m not sure that Tiktok is going to lose that argument, but because they spent so much time on it, they didn’t make the arguments about the national security stuff and the privacy and security stuff, which I think is the weakest. part of the government’s business.”

The justices seemed more sympathetic to the government’s security concerns, said Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor and former Justice Department national security adviser. “It’s very plausible that Tiktok gets some votes,” says Rozenshtein. “I think the three are probably Justices Sotomayor, Gorsuch and maybe Kagan, but I have a hard time seeing TikTok getting five votes, which is what it would take to overturn this law.”

At a press conference after the hearing on Friday, Francisco said the argument went “really well” and that the justices “examined both sides vigorously.”

It is unclear when the court will issue its decision, but Rozenshtein and Reid believe it will come sooner rather than later. TikTok’s lawyer, Francisco, suggested the judges could issue a stay or an injunction to prevent the ban from taking effect as scheduled, but they gave no signal as to whether they would consider it.

Trump also pleaded with the nation’s highest court to block the ban from taking effect in an amicus brief filed last month, vowing to find a “political” solution to save TikTok once he gets power resume “President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing national security concerns,” Trump attorney D. John Sauer wrote in the filing. The court has not yet responded to the instruction.

If the judges uphold the ban, a deal with Trump may just be TikTok’s last chance for survival.