RFK Jr.'s Vaccine Moves in Limbo as Judge Weighs Injunction (1)

Physician and public health groups urged a court Friday to block the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s decisions to reduce the recommended vaccine shots for kids, canceling the federal advisory panel’s meeting later this month, and rolling back other policy changes.

The litigation takes aim at Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s remake of the nation’s vaccine policy, claiming the secretary has advanced his policy campaign in the dark without adequate explanations for his moves while rejecting established processes that the medical groups’ members have relied upon for decades.

The outcome of the case could also set new boundaries on the Department of Health and Human Services’ power to make prompt changes to vaccine policy.

A lawyer for the groups told Judge Brian E. Murphy, of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the government illegally bypassed the usual process and critical advisory panel review for immunization recommendations when in January it removed vaccines from the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule.

James Oh of Epstein Becker & Green PC said officials haven’t offered a reasoned explanation for the policy change, having “no discussion or citation to new data or studies that indicate they warrant a change.”

“This is a clear and present danger to public health,” the attorney said, “that is going to harm the practices of doctors and the function and mission of these organizations that are just trying to care for the American public.”

The Department of Justice’s Issac Belfer countered that the groups are “trying to stifle debate about vaccine policy” and insisted the agency has discretion and authority to make vaccine policy decisions.

Murphy, who gave the government a few days to respond to late filed documents, took the matter under advisement.

Balance Plan

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and other groups and individuals sued Kennedy over the government’s drastic vaccine policy changes.

Those include a May directive removing a Covid-19 vaccine recommendation, the advisory panel’s reconstitution, and the January removal of vaccines from the childhood schedule.

The latest update to the groups’ lawsuit says the schedule change violates the Administrative Procedure Act, as Kennedy and others hadn’t considered appropriate data and offered a satisfactory explanation for taking action.

In addition to the childhood schedule, the medical groups challenged Kennedy’s firing of members of the advisory panel and restocking of it with vaccine skeptics and others that allegedly lack technical expertise and balanced opinions required under federal law.

Oh presented the judge and government lawyers with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices membership balance plan, a federal document required to outline how the panel would choose new members and comply with regulations requiring fair balance and avoidance of inappropriate influence.

“We’ve been very concerned about what would happen if the ACIP were to continue meeting” because “it has become a platform for junk science,” Richard Hughes, a member of Epstein Becker & Green, and a former executive with Moderna Inc., said in a press call with reporters after the hearing.

Murphy pressed Oh on whether Kennedy’s hiring of new members in June and September could be a procedural violation of the balance plan, and a possible basis for an APA violation.

Oh said the judge would have to go no further if it found such a violation, with Belfer disagreeing.

Gray Area

The physician and public health groups also contended that Kennedy violated rules for searching for new members to the advisory panel by having an outside lawyer vet people.

In a declaration filed with the court the day before the hearing, a doctor with the National Center for Health Research said she was contacted by an attorney with Siri & Glimstad LLP, a law firm that’s challenged vaccine mandates and formerly represented Kennedy.

A later phone interview went nowhere, but the outreach shows Kennedy may be flouting the rules for how candidates for the panel are supposed to be vetted, the groups claimed.

“That demonstrates a pattern and practice of this secretary trying to fundamentally change vaccine policy in this country without a good explanation and through—dare I say—underhanded means,” Oh said.

Hughes in the press call also claimed that “there are serious conflicts of interest” with Aaron Siri and his involvement with the ACIP.

Belfer responded to the group’s request for preliminary relief by claiming the agency has significant discretion to adopt new vaccine recommendations without being advised by the panel and to restock the advisory panel as the secretary wishes.

“There’s a lot of gray here, and a lot of room for discretion,” Belfer said.

The government lawyer also urged Murphy to narrow any injunction he might grant. Instead of vacating the vaccine recommendations, the court could send them back to the agency to issue adequate reasoning. Similarly if the advisory panel is found to not be lawfully constituted, the court should give the agency a chance to remedy the problem, he said.

That proposal left Murphy with more questions: “If that happens what about all the votes ACIP has made while in this scenario of it being unlawfully constituted?”

The defendants are represented by the Justice Department.

The case is Am. Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy, D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-11916, hearing held 2/13/26.