A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from implementing sweeping changes to the nation’s childhood immunization schedule, siding with major medical organizations that argue Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unlawfully altered vaccine policy and improperly reconstituted a federal vaccine advisory panel.
Under Kennedy, the federal government has cut the number of shots routinely recommended to children, including for flu, hepatitis A, rotavirus and meningococcal disease. Kennedy also dismissed all 17 members of the vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, installing new members, several of whom have criticized vaccines, especially covid-19 mRNA shots.
Several groups sued, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
In his 45-page opinion, Judge Brian E. Murphy slammed the administration’s approach to revamping government recommendations for how and when children should be immunized. He said the government has undermined its history of recognizing “the importance and value” of involving independent experts in setting our national public health agenda and relying on “a method scientific in nature” to make such decisions.
“History is littered with once-universal truths that have since come under scrutiny,” the judge wrote. He added that even though science is not perfect, “nevertheless, science is still ‘the best we have.’”
The U.S. District Court judge from Massachusetts wrote that the government bypassed the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — which is how vaccine recommendations have been made for decades — to change the immunization schedule. He called it a “technical, procedural failure” and a “strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”
The pause on the administration’s actions are temporary, as the dispute is expected to wind through multiple rounds of appeals, raising the prospect of a drawn-out court battle over who ultimately calls the shots on the scientific standards shaping federal vaccine recommendations.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
Government attorneys have defended the secretary’s authority to remove and appoint advisory committee members, arguing that federal law grants HHS broad discretion over such panels. They also contend that policy disagreements over vaccine recommendations do not amount to legal violations.
AAP President Andrew Racine hailed the ruling, saying it was important for such vital vaccine recommendations to be based on science.
“This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years,” he said in a statement.
Racine said the ruling provided clarity for families so they know what vaccines are being recommended, and to talk to their pediatricians for the appropriate vaccine schedule for their children.
As health secretary, Kennedy — the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group — has made clear that he wants to overhaul the nation’s immunization system and argued the prior panel of vaccine advisers was plagued with conflicts of interest.
In early December, President Donald Trump ordered federal health officials to review the childhood immunization schedule, including recommending fewer vaccines to align with other developed countries. The judge wrote that HHS cannot circumvent the long-standing practice of getting advice from the federal panel without offering an explanation “simply because they are following the President’s orders.”
He also wrote the government removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them without undertaking the “rigorous screening” traditionally used to select members. The judge noted that “even under the most generous reading,” only six of the 15 members on the panel “have any meaningful experience in vaccines.”
The advisory panel was scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday, but that meeting has now been postponed, according to an HHS official. The judge temporarily suspended the appointment of 13 of the 15 panel members, finding they were not appointed properly. Therefore, he noted, that this week’s meeting could not take place. “For how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?”
The vaccine advisory panel was designed to be an independent panel of experts that reviews data on vaccine safety and effectiveness and recommends which shots Americans should receive and at what ages. Its guidance has long been widely followed by physicians, shapes school-entry requirements in many states and determines which vaccines insurers must cover with no out-of-pocket costs.
Under Kennedy, the meetings of the committee have provided a platform for those in the anti-vaccine movement to sow doubts in the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At its December meeting, committee members and presenters made at least 60 false, misleading or unsupported claims about vaccine safety, disease spread and rationale for childhood vaccination, according to the Evidence Collective, a coalition of science and medicine researchers.
In recent months, some members of the panel had publicly questioned the safety and manufacturing of covid-19 shots, such as raising a debunked theory that DNA contaminants in the vaccines were harmful — and some had been seeking to potentially stop recommending the mRNA shots. The plan had recently been abandoned as some Republicans have warned that additional overhauls to vaccine policy could be politically risky ahead of the November midterms, The Washington Post previously reported.
The judge paused all votes taken by the vaccine advisers. Some recent votes include moving from broadly recommending everyone 6 months and older get a coronavirus shot to instead advising Americans to first consult a clinician. The panel also voted to drop a recommendation that all newborns receive a vaccine for hepatitis B, an action that has drawn swift resistance from pediatricians, state health departments and major medical groups.
In court filings, the medical groups contend that Kennedy’s reconstitution of the vaccine panel was improper and that subsequent votes on vaccine recommendations — including changes affecting covid-19 and other routine childhood immunizations — were, therefore, invalid. They argued that the administration bypassed established procedure and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies make policy.
Government attorneys argued that the health secretary’s authority is far-reaching. At one point during the hearings, the judge asked them: “If the secretary said instead of getting a vaccine … to prevent measles, I think you should get a shot that gives you measles; is that unreviewable?”
The government attorney replied: “Yes.”
On Substack, Robert Malone, the committee’s vice chair and a prominent critic of coronavirus vaccines, called the opinion a “judicial overreach.” He wrote that there is a compelling “case for bringing intellectual diversity and fresh expertise” to the panel and for aligning vaccine recommendations with the practices of other nations.
“In the meantime, the administration should continue its work,” he wrote.
In his opinion, Murphy wrote that he was not dictating what the health department can say related to vaccines, but rather the procedure by which federal officials can change policy.
Public health experts say the continuing legal dispute will create more confusion for parents.
The Trump administration’s many changes to immunization policy have already fractured the response of states. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have announced they are abandoning CDC guidance for some or all childhood vaccines mostly in favor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ schedule, according to a tally by the KFF, a health policy research organization. Most of states that are no longer following federal health guidance are led by Democratic governors, but several have Republican governors, including Alaska, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Lauren Weber and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
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