Recent pedagogical trends have highlighted the need to incorporate practices that 1) connect the students to the communities of the target language (Seewald, 2023; Gearhart et al, 2023, Anderson, 2023), and 2) attempt to promote social justice (Randolph and Johnson, 2017; Nguyen and Zeichner, 2021). Since the concept of social justice encompasses an array of actions whose execution may extrapolate the ambit of a language classroom, a relevant and timely question is what does promoting social justice entail in the context of additional language learning and teaching? Further, in practical terms, what kinds of differentiating actions can instructors sponsor to engage in social justice and who benefits from it? How can the concept of universal design be translated into a pedagogical constructive and socially engaged classroom practice? How has the incorporation of social justice-oriented practices affected students and instructors? In this paper, we rely on the teaching and learning of Brazilian Portuguese as an additional language in the United States, while we discuss and demonstrate how instructors have attempted to achieve social justice and equity, and the kinds of questions and challenges that have resulted from such practices. Some of the most pressing issues specifically related to the teaching of Portuguese as an additional language are 1) the use of inclusive language and its implications; 2) implicit and overt racist and sexist linguistic expressions; 3) linguistic prejudice across the different linguistic variants of Portuguese, 4) the challenges resulted from diverging political discourses. Considering the interconnection among pedagogical practices across disciplines, such innovations, and trends in education merit attentive scrutiny, and have the potential to render a discussion whose benefits would be widespread.