Last week, a Texas federal district court judge issued a decision in a lawsuit brought by Texas and 25 other states challenging President Obama’s new deferred action initiatives. In his decision, he issued a “preliminary injunction,” meaning that he temporarily blocked the implementation of the two initiatives announced by President Obama last November, the expansion of the two-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents (DAPA).

These initiatives came in response to more than 10 years of political stalemates and failure by Congress to address America’s broken immigration system and would provide temporary relief from deportation and grant work permission to approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants who came to the United States either as children or who are the parents of U.S. citizen and green card holders currently living in the United States without documentation. The government had been preparing to launch the expanded DACA initiative last week and the DAPA program later this spring.

While the decision will unfortunately delay critical efforts to address the flawed immigration system, the need and the demand for reform has never been greater. We remain confident that it is a question of when, not if, these programs will take effect.

Here are five things you need to know about the decision: Read more…

1. This is a temporary setback, not a defeat

These deferred action initiatives are based on the well-established authority of Presidents and other executive branch officers to allocate and prioritize enforcement resources. This practice is used by prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel on a daily basis.

In addition, President Obama obtained a lengthy, detailed legal opinion from lawyers with Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) prior to announcing the expanded DACA and DAPA programs.  The Texas judge’s views are not only at odds with the OLC opinion, but with Supreme Court precedent, decades of practice, as well as the views of 136 law professors who explained how the President acted well within his legal authority to grant deferred action.

The White House has announced that the Justice Department will appeal the judge’s decision and file and emergency stay to allow the initiatives to continue and it is expected that the higher courts overturn the judge’s decision based on well-established precedent.

The case will now go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is unclear how long it will be before the appeals court ultimately rules.

In the meantime, potential applicants for expanded DACA and DAPA should continue collecting documents and saving for filing fees so they will be ready to apply when the injunction is lifted.

2. The decision does not affect the original DACA program and other administrative reforms announced in November 2014

The only programs at issue in the lawsuit were the expanded DACA and DAPA initiatives. The original DACA program, first announced in June 2012, is not affected and those who were granted DACA already should apply for their DACA renewal as planned. This ruling only delays the start of DAPA and the expansion of DACA.

In addition, other aspects of the President’s executive actions also remain fully intact. This includes the new immigration enforcement priorities memorandum. This memo establishes a department-wide set of priorities to focus on the removal of individuals who pose threats to “national security, public safety, and border security.” It went into effect on January 5, 2015. Virtually every person who is eligible for expanded DACA and DAPA will not qualify as an enforcement priority and will therefore be a strong candidate for the favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion (also essentially meaning a relief from deportation), should they come into contact with immigration enforcement officers.

3. The court reached only narrow legal issues

In his ruling, the judge, whose statements in the past made it clear that he was pre-disposed against favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration context, made three main findings. First, he found that the 26 states which are plaintiffs in the lawsuit have standing (i.e. have alleged an injury that they would suffer if the President’s program were allowed to go into effect. This harm, as described by the judge, would consist of increased costs in providing drivers licenses and educational benefits to the immigrants affected, among other things. Yet the judge ignored the evidence demonstrating that these initiatives have economic benefits for the states and the nation as whole, in raising wages, increasing tax revenue, and creating new jobs.

The court did not rule on the primary legal claim that the deferred action initiatives are unconstitutional. In fact, it solely relies on an alleged technical violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to find that the Administration did not follow proper procedures, while ignoring the fact that the President’s deferred action initiatives are not even subject to the APA.

4. There is widespread support for the deferred action initiatives

Although 26 states have signed on as plaintiffs in this lawsuit, many of those states have relatively few noncitizens who might benefit from expanded DACA or DAPA. In contrast, 12 states plus the District of Columbia, 33 cities, along with the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities, and police chiefs have filed amicus “friend of the court” briefs in support of the initiatives. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the cities backing the initiatives actually have a larger total population of undocumented immigrants than the states that are suing the federal government. The fact that those most impacted believe that the deferred action initiatives are beneficial to their communities is telling and contradicts the plaintiff-states’ claims. In addition, polls indicate that a majority of the American public backs the administration’s executive actions, while opposing efforts to overturn the initiatives.

5. Prior Decisions

Lawsuits against similar executive actions on immigration have failed in the past. A similarly politically motivated lawsuit was just thrown out in December when a Sheriff argued that Obama’s announcements were unconstitutional.

In 2012, Mississippi challenged the legality of the DACA program in a case similar to the 26-state lawsuit, but the case was dismissed because the judge found the perceived economic hardship was purely speculative.