Two NYU Law students, Nina McKay ’25 and Byul Yoon ’25, have been named 2025 Skadden Fellows. Launched in 1988 by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the program funds two-year fellowships for recent law graduates to pursue a public interest project at a host organization. Both McKay and Yoon will spend their fellowships at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City.
At the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, McKay will work in partnership with low-income Black Mississippians and advocacy organizations to seek fair representation on local school boards via Voting Rights Act litigation.
Before attending NYU Law, McKay worked in legal services at Bread for the City in Washington, DC, through the Avodah Jewish Service Corps. A Hays Fellow, McKay is a co-president of the American Constitution Society, the intake coordinator for the Suspension Representation Project, a clinical extern at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund through the Racial Equity Strategies Clinic, and a managing editor of the NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. McKay spent her 1L summer at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program and her 2L summer at the ACLU Voting Rights Project.
“I picked my project because I hope that, through working with my clients to ensure fair representation on school boards, schools will become more accountable to parents and communities of color, helping close racial gaps in education and economic opportunity,” McKay says. “I’m incredibly grateful to my NYU professors, PILC advisors, peers, and community for making this possible; I’m so fortunate to have learned so much from so many incredible civil rights attorneys and attorneys-in-training at NYU; and I’m just overjoyed that, because of their support and the support of folks at the ACLU Voting Rights Project, I get to do this work right out of law school.”
Through the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, Yoon will defend advocates who have been targeted with Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). She will provide legal representation, amicus briefs, and Know Your Rights trainings, and promote legislation that protects First Amendment rights for low-income communities of color.
Yoon, a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, has worked as a grassroots organizer, training activists and launching social justice campaigns across the country. At NYU Law, she works with the Constitutional Litigation Clinic and is a staff editor with the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. She previously worked in the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic, and spent her summers with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Federal Defenders of New York.
“I am thrilled to launch a movement defense project with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, Technology team,” Yoon says. “I developed this project because as a community organizer, I have directly experienced powerful entities abusing the legal system to intimidate and silence activists who can’t afford representation. Repression is rapidly escalating across the country, and we urgently need more robust legal protection for grassroots advocates and organizations. By defending the First Amendment rights of frontline leaders, I hope to safeguard the power of social movements to fight for racial, gender, and economic justice.”
Posted January 9, 2024