Federal Judge Brian E. Murphy temporarily blocked U.S. health officials on Monday from cutting the number of vaccines recommended for every child, pausing parts of a broader vaccine recommendation overhaul led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The judge said Kennedy likely violated federal procedures as he revamps the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, according to Associated Press reporting.
The order halted an announcement by Kennedy in January to end broad, all-children recommendations for vaccines against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV, AP said. The judge also stopped a meeting of a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory committee that was set to convene this week in Atlanta, with officials saying it was postponed.
Murphy’s order is not the final word, the report said. The blocks are temporary and pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment, and federal health officials indicated they planned to appeal.
Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said in response that HHS looked forward to the decision being overturned “just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” AP reported. Nixon made the remarks after the ruling, which AP described as the latest development in a lawsuit filed last July by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups.
The lawsuit in federal court in Boston originally focused on Kennedy’s decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women, AP said. The plaintiffs later updated their case as Kennedy took additional steps that alarmed medical societies and asked Murphy to address those policy changes as well.
AP said the plaintiffs amended the lawsuit to seek an end to the scaling back of the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule. They also asked the court to examine Kennedy’s actions involving ACIP, the panel that advises public health officials on which vaccines to recommend to doctors and patients.
Kennedy fired the entire 17-member ACIP panel last year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices, AP reported. In Monday’s order, Murphy said Kennedy’s reconstitution of ACIP likely violated federal law and that the appointments — and all decisions made by the reformed committee — were put on hold.
Officials said ACIP was scheduled to meet this week to discuss COVID-19 vaccine safety, among other issues, but that the gathering “was postponed,” AP reported. Attorney Richard Hughes IV, representing the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet,” adding, “How can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?”
Hughes called the judge’s order “a momentous step toward restoring science-based vaccine policy,” AP reported. Jason Schwartz, a Yale University vaccine policy expert who has studied the committee, called the halting of an ACIP meeting for legal reasons “unprecedented” in its 62-year existence, according to AP.
In comments after the ruling, Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the policy changes left many Americans confused even as Trump administration officials said they would not cause families to lose access to vaccines or cause insurers to stop covering them. Racine said, “If anyone has any questions about what’s the appropriate vaccine schedule for their children, the best thing to do is to talk to their pediatricians.”
Schwartz said he expected federal health officials to keep expressing “their deep skepticism regarding the importance of vaccination” and to keep embracing “unsupported vaccine safety allegations,” AP reported. After the ruling, one of Kennedy’s appointees, Dr. Robert Malone, urged the Trump administration to keep pursuing Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes, writing on Substack that, “A district court order is a delay, not a defeat.”