Judge stops RFK Jr.’s efforts. to overhaul vaccine policy

(CN) – A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the Trump administration from making sweeping changes to the childhood immunization schedule on Monday, banning key elements of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine goals.

The decision also halted all decisions made by Kennedy-appointed panelists on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — and put on hold the new members the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has appointed to the committee since June.

In his Order with 45 pagesU.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the government, through its recent actions, has disregarded long-standing methods and undermined the integrity of key departments meant to provide expert guidance on the clinical use of vaccines and other public health issues.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, these relevant measures include removing broad recommendations from the childhood vaccination schedule, limiting access to Covid-19 immunizations, and a comprehensive review of ACIP — the committee typically charged with any changes to vaccine policy.

“The government bypassed ACIP to change immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure in itself and a strong indicator of something more fundamentally problematic, an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee,” Murphy said in the decision.

Nominee Joe Biden sided with a group of six medical organizations that claim Kennedy made arbitrary changes to longstanding medical practices and guidelines without the lengthy evidence-gathering process necessary for such decisions.

“Today’s decision is a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities and pediatricians everywhere,” said Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. press release on Monday. “When Secretary Kennedy made unsupported and unscientific changes to pediatric immunization recommendations last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics was forced to stand up and back down.”

Racine added that the AAP would “very much prefer” to return to the decade-old partnership it had with the federal government that allowed for unified and clear immunization recommendations that “protected children from dangerous and preventable diseases.”

Meanwhile, the AAP released its own immunization schedule in February that largely ignored changes made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a schedule officially endorsed by more than 12 national medical societies and supported by hundreds of public health groups, according to Racine.

IN initial lawsuit in July 2025, the AAP and other public health groups said Kennedy’s vaccine rollback endangers the lives of children and pregnant women, arguing that these demographics are at increased risk of serious infections from Covid-19 and other viruses — and that denying access is “ethically indefensible.”

“This decision immediately exposes these vulnerable populations to a serious illness with potentially irreversible long-term effects and, in some cases, death,” the groups claimed in suit. “This is not a hypothetical concern, but an urgent public health emergency that requires immediate legal action and remediation.”

The lawsuit came just over a month after Kennedy announced in X that Covid-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women – a move that shocked the medical world and caused deep skepticism among health experts.

“Judge Murphy’s decision is a much-needed victory for a common-sense approach to federal vaccine policy that is based on science, not misinformation and conspiracy theories,” said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of the health research group at Public Citizen. statement on Monday.

The groups also alleged that Kennedy appointed panelists who lacked the necessary qualifications to make recommendations on vaccinations — a move the secretary made after firing all 17 previous members of the vaccine committee.

“Kennedy’s handpicked ACIP has been a national embarrassment, completely lacking in the ability to make careful, fact-based decisions,” Steinbrook said.

Murphy, in his ruling, said that even under the “most generous reading,” only six of ACIP’s 15 members appear to have any significant experience with vaccines, which he finds to be the committee’s “very focus.”

“ACIP is not just a committee of physicians, or even a committee of public health experts; it is a committee dedicated specifically to the use of vaccines and related agents for the effective control of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Murphy said in the decision. “With regard to this specific function, the newly appointed members appear clearly unqualified.”

The federal government has argued that ACIP and Kennedy have absolute authority to make vaccine policy and provide health guidance as they see fit, even if that guidance may be facially wrong — an argument Murphy gave little time to in his decision.

“This argument can only be sustained if one completely abandons the idea of ​​objective fact, a nihilistic endeavor that this court does not find properly read into Congress’s public health statutes,” he said in the decision.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told Courthouse News on Monday that “HHS expects this judge’s ruling to be overturned just like its other efforts to keep the Trump administration out of government.”