The U.S. government and TikTok will be heading to the federal court in Washington for the oral arguments in a consequential legal case that will determine if – or how the popular social media platform used by nearly half of all Americans will continue to operate in the country.

TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, are challenging a U.S. law that requires them to break ties or face a ban in the U.S. by mid-January. The legal battle is expected to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was a culmination of a year-long saga in Washington over the video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.

TikTok argues the law runs contrary to the First Amendment while other opponents claim it mirrors crackdowns sometimes seen in authoritarian countries abroad.

America government’s two primary concerns include that TikTok collects vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion and that the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect. Tik Tok had consistently denied this.

Opponents of the law stress a ban would also cause disruptions in the world of marketing, retail and in the lives of many different content creators, some of whom also sued the government in May. TikTok is covering the legal costs for that lawsuit, which the court has consolidated with the company’s complaint, and another filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a non-profit called BASED Politics Inc.

During high-stakes negotiations with the Biden administration more than two years ago, TikTok presented the government with a draft 90-page agreement that allows a third party to monitor the platform’s algorithm, content moderation practices and other programming. TikTok says it has spent more than $2 billion to voluntarily implement some of these measures, which include storing U.S. user data on servers controlled by the tech giant Oracle. But it said a deal was not reached because government officials essentially walked away from the negotiating table in August 2022.