WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on

Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block

a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to

divest the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a ban on the app.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion

with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,

asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday's ruling means that Tiktok now must quickly move to the

Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.

The companies had warned that without court action, the law

will "shut down TikTok - one of the nation's most popular speech

platforms - for its more than 170 million domestic monthly

users."

"The petitioners have not identified any case in which a

court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of

Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while

review is sought in the Supreme Court," the D.C. Circuit said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.

Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance

divests it by Jan. 19. The law also gives the U.S. government

sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise

concerns about collection of Americans' data.

The U.S. Justice Department argues "continued Chinese

control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to

national security."

TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the

social media app's ties to China, arguing its content

recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on

cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation

decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the U.S.