Law school administrators are breathing a sigh of relief after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday walked back a requirement that international students attend class in person in the fall—a rule critics said would threaten the health and safety of students and potentially drive foreign students away from their institutions.

While legal educators are applauding the outcome, they say the now-rescinded rule diverted time and attention away from planning for the fall semester and working through the changes they need to make in order to operate safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I was relieved," said Penn State Dickinson Law Dean Danielle Conway of the reversal. "But this took a significant amount of time to respond to, as it was dropped on us six weeks before orientation. For Dickinson Law, 10 of our 85 1Ls are international students. We're going remote learning on a hybrid platform, and an important segment of our class would have been excluded."

Dickinson Law was in the midst of changing its registration structure to ensure that international students would not lose their visas, she added.

ICE announced the in-person class requirement July 6, sparking panic across colleges and universities, many of which rely heavily on international students to fill classes and coffers. The agency's Student Exchange Visitor Program traditionally requires people in the United States on international student visas to complete their coursework in person. But the agency dropped the in-person requirement last spring when virtually all classes moved online amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The July 6 directive stated that holders of international student visas would have to attend at least one class in person in the fall or leave the country. Under the rule, international students would have had to leave the country midsemester if their schools went fully online because of rising COVID-19 cases. Higher education experts speculated that the rule change was intended to pressure colleges and universities to resume in-person classes next semester.

An avalanche of lawsuits quickly followed. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were the first to sue, and the University of California system and Johns Hopkins University followed suit. Meanwhile, law school administrators scrambled to figure out how they could accommodate their international students under the new rule.

"It has been like a perfect storm—trying to figure out fall enrollment just a few weeks form the start of the semester," said Sarah Gruzas, director of graduate and international programs at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. "USC has a large population of international students, and we really pride ourselves on welcoming them. They contribute so much value to the diversity of our student community, so it was a shock to see the original ruling came out."

USC's law school is planning to be almost fully online the fall, and administrators were contemplating adding a hybrid class for international students that would include some in-person instruction to adhere to the now-rescinded rule, Gruzas said. Other law schools were also planning similar in-person classes just for international students.

The earlier rule change sent the wrong message to international students by implying that they aren't welcome in the United States, said Sarah Kelly, vice dean for administration at St. John's University School of Law and the chair of the Association of American Law Schools' section on post-graduate legal education.

"The July 6 guidance didn't reflect the inclusivity and community that we foster in our law schools," she said. "The update we received yesterday goes a long way towards both enabling our students to have a positive experience and allowing them to continue their studies in the United States without fear of what happens if the public health situation shifts such that online learning becomes necessary," she said. "It also allows them to prioritize their own health and doesn't put them in the difficult situation of having to make decision to study in person to retain their visa."

Matthew Diller, dean of Fordham University School of Law, said Wednesday that the reversal in policy was likely prompted by the likelihood that the mounting legal challenges would succeed. While a welcome development, the rollback of the in-person class requirement doesn't eliminate the many other challenges that international students face during the pandemic. Foremost is their ability to secure students visas at a time when many consulates remain closed. Diller said many of Fordham's international law students still don't know whether they will be able to come to New York next month when classes resume.

"The whole issue was terrible for our students," he said. "Our students are already juggling so many things. We have international students who returned to their home countries who are anxious to come back. We have international students who are here in the U.S. who can't go back easily because their countries aren't welcoming to Americans at this point. Our international students—like all law students—are already dealing with tremendous anxiety."