RFK Jr. Sued by Fauci Successor Alleging Illegal Removal at NIH

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sued for allegedly firing an infectious disease leader for speaking out against his public health agenda.

According to the Tuesday lawsuit, scientist Jeanne Marrazzo was fired from her National Institutes of Health post after raising concerns “about government actions that she reasonably believed constituted a violation of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; a gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety; and censorship related to scientific research or the integrity of the scientific process.”

Her claims, the lawsuit says, fall under the Whistleblower Protection Act, and other actions she’d taken during Kennedy’s tenure leading the Department of Health and Human Services are protected by the US Constitution.

The lawsuit follows “multiple emails, conversations, and meetings” between Marrazzo—the NIH’s director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—and leadership at HHS and NIH over actions she found were politically motivated and in conflict with scientific integrity, such as canceling grants and clinical trials.

Marrazzo also brought a whistleblower retaliation complaint and disclosed government wrongdoing in September to the US Office of Special Counsel.

However, Marrazzo filed a federal lawsuit because “actions by the Trump Administration have fully eroded the independence” of both the Merit Systems Protection Board—an independent agency that handles federal worker employment disputes—and OSC, and her “claims cannot be fairly investigated or adjudicated in these forums,” according to the complaint.

Marrazzo took the NIAID role in 2023 after the retirement of Anthony Fauci, a widely known leader during the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy, who’s skeptical of vaccines and has taken steps to reduce access to the shots since becoming secretary, targeted Fauci over his science and policies during the pandemic, authoring a critical book titled “The Real Anthony Fauci.”

The lawsuit comes after a whirlwind year of widespread cuts to NIH grants. A Harvard Medical School analysis showed that hundreds of federally funded clinical trials were disrupted by NIH cuts, with trials on prevention and infectious diseases, as well as those conducted outside the US, being hit the hardest.

Marrazzo’s lawsuit claims that government leadership moved to further an “anti-vaccine” agenda, which accepted “Kennedy’s position that vaccines are unnecessary for healthy populations.”

“In so doing, they rejected decades of incontrovertible scientific evidence to the contrary,” the lawsuit said.

Marrazzo also took issues with HHS cuts to grants believed to be for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grants, noting that many of those terminated “had nothing to do with the Administration’s intended targets in its anti-DEI initiatives but were cut anyway because they contained phrases like ‘health equity’ in their program descriptions.”

The case is Marrazzo v. Kennedy, D. Md., No. 1:25-cv-04144, Complaint 12/16/25.