We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the DAPA and expanded DACA case, which will have profound consequences for our immigrant brothers and sisters who live and work every day under a cloud of fear, as well as for the state of racial and economic justice in our country. We are confident the court will reverse the decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and allow the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies to go into effect, affording millions of people the opportunity to apply for work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. We encourage the Department of Homeland Security to take all steps necessary to ensure these much-needed policies can be implemented as soon as possible after the court issues its decision this summer.

At a time when working people feel increasingly disposable and deportable, when corporations are allowed to profit from the mass imprisonment of people of color, when our government is rounding up refugee families from their beds at night, and when we are confronting at so many levels the racial bias deeply entrenched in our laws and their enforcement, the outcome of this case will have a significant impact on the direction our nation takes moving forward.

At heart, the question the Supreme Court will consider is whether our immigration enforcement regime will be allowed to take modest steps to begin to protect and empower hardworking people, or whether it will continue to serve as a tool to exclude and oppress.

Much is at stake in this case, but working people do not need a court ruling to tell them what is just. In the face of criminalization, exploitation and base attempts to sow division, we will continue to work in every community in the country to build what we believe is the only true antidote: solidarity.

This blog originally appeared in aflcio.org on January 19, 2016. Reprinted with permission.

Richard Trumka is the president of AFL-CIO, the largest organization of labor unions in the country.  He is an outspoken advocate for social and economic justice.  Trumka heads the labor movement’s efforts to create an economy based broadly on shared prosperity and to hold government and employers accountable to working families.