The US supreme court said on Wednesday that it will hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that could end its US operations.

In its order Wednesday, the supreme court said it was setting aside two hours for oral arguments on 10 January to consider TikTok’s lawsuit against the justice department and the attorney general, Merrick Garland.

“Applicants suggested this court treat the applications as petitions for writs of certiorari; doing so, the petitions are granted,” the order stated.

Justices granted an application by lawyers for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to consider the legality of a looming ban on the app while they look at a lower court’s ruling to uphold a law passed by Congress in April.

The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit earlier this month rejected ByteDance’s argument that the law requiring it to divest of TikTok by 19 January, or close access to the app by about 170 million Americans, violated the free speech provision of the US constitution’s first amendment.

The justice department argued that it considered TikTok “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” because of a vast amount of data it compiled and stored from its users in the US.

There is evidence that a hard approach by the US to TikTok during the Biden administration will thaw once president-elect Donald Trump assumes office next month, a day after the TikTok ban was set to take effect.

“[I have] a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said on Monday at a press conference in Florida, after meeting TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Reuters reported.

TikTok and ByteDance had asked the supreme court to issue a decision on its request by 6 January to allow, in the event it is rejected, for the “complex task of shutting down TikTok” in the US, the news agency reported.

This is a developing story. More to follow …