Judge halts 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, halting key elements of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine goals.

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

In his 45-page order, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the government, through its recent actions, has disregarded long-held methods and damaged the integrity of key departments meant to provide expert guidance on the clinical use of vaccines and other matters of public health.

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

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

The Joe Biden appointee sided with a group of six medical organizations, which claim Kennedy made arbitrary changes to long-standing medical practices and guidance without the lengthy evidence collection process necessary for such decisions.

“Today’s ruling is a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere,” Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a press release Monday. “When Secretary Kennedy made unsupported and unscientific changes to pediatric immunization recommendations last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics was mission-bound to step up and push back.”

Racine added that the AAP would “much prefer” to return to the decades-long partnership it had with the federal government that allowed for unified and clear immunization recommendations that “protect children from dangerous, preventable illnesses.”

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

In the 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 these demographics are at an 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 the lawsuit. “This is not a hypothetical concern, but a pressing public health emergency that demands immediate legal action and correction.”

The lawsuit came a little over a month after Kennedy announced on 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 sane approach to federal vaccine policy that relies on science, not misinformation and conspiracy theories,” Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday.

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

“Kennedy’s hand-picked ACIP has been a national embarrassment, thoroughly 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 out of 15 members of the ACIP appear to have any meaningful experience in vaccines, which he finds to be the “very focus” of the committee.

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

The federal government has argued that the ACIP and Kennedy have absolute authority to make vaccine policies 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 ruling.

“This argument can only be countenanced if one completely abandons the idea of objective fact, a nihilist endeavor this court does not find appropriately read into Congress’ public health statutes,” he said in the ruling.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon told Courthouse News Monday that “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”