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20 ¦ APRIL 12, 2021 NEWS

¦ From ADMITTED STUDENTS on PAGE 19 yield, Spivey said. Typically, law schools facing an
us and explain how it is a financial hurdle for them, incoming class that is larger than it wants will of-
then we are willing to remove it.” fer some students scholarship money to defer until
Additionally, this admission cycle appears to the following year. Or they will simply deal with
have produced the most diverse first-year class in having a bigger 1L class—which can strain its fac-
Notre Dame history, the school said. Among those ulty. Spivey said he doesn’t expect Notre Dame’s ap-
who submitted deposits by Tuesday, 32% are stu- proach to catch on among other law schools, and
dents of color. That figure was 23% for the class that predicted that the school may actually relent and
started last fall. The diversity of this fall’s class actu- let in a larger 1L class in response to the negative
ally increased during the last-minute deposit surge, blowback it’s receiving.
according to the school. And the incoming class— “I strongly believe other law schools will not
meaning those who have submitted deposits—will follow suit,” he said. “I really think this will be a
have the highest-ever median Law School Admis- one-off.”
sion test score, at 168, it said. (This year has seen a ¦

significant jump in the percentage of LSAT scores Karen Sloan is the Legal Education Editor and Se-
of 160 and above, which experts have largely at- nior Writer at ALM. Contact her at ksloan@alm.
tributed to the shorter, online version of the LSAT
that came online in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 com. On Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ Sign up for
pandemic.) Ahead of the Curve—her weekly email update on

But wait-listing admitted students isn’t how law trends and innovation in legal education—here:
schools generally deal with a high-than-expected https://www.law.com/briefings/ahead-of-the-curve/

Supreme Court Dismisses
Trump Twitter Challenge

By Tom McParland

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dismissed The Knight First Amendment Institute at Co-
as moot former President Donald Trump’s lumbia University, which lodged the long-running
challenge to a federal appeals court ruling lawsuit in 2017, agreed that the dispute was no lon-
that barred him from blocking certain critics from ger active, but argued that it was the result of the
following his Twitter account. platform’s decision to ban Trump in the wake of his
The decision remanded the case to the U.S. Court incendiary comments following the Jan. 6 insurrec-
of Appeals for Second Circuit, which found in 2019 tion attempt at the U.S. Capitol.
that Trump’s Twitter account qualified as a “public In ending the litigation Monday, the Supreme
forum” under the First Amendment and that the Court did not rule on the merits of the case, but di-
former president had acted unlawfully in blocking rected the Second Circuit in a brief order to vacate
users that were critical of his presidency. its earlier decision finding that Trump had acted
The Trump administration had asked the high unconstitutionally.
court to review the ruling, but later abandoned its Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, meanwhile,
appeal on the eve of President Joe Biden’s inaugura- offered a 12-page concurring opinion, expressing
tion, saying that the case would become moot once his concern over Twitter’s “unprecedented” ability
Trump left office. to control speech on its platform. Any control that

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