A federal judge Monday granted public health groups’ request to stay Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointments to a federal advisory panel on vaccines while their challenge to vaccine policy changes moves through the courts.
While Boston-based Judge Brian Murphy stopped short of formally blocking the panel from convening, his opinion effectively halted the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ scheduled meeting this week at the CDC from moving forward. HHS confirmed the two-day meeting in Atlanta is postponed.
“While the appointments of the challenged members of ACIP are stayed, ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet, for how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?” Murphy said in the opinion.
Murphy also granted the American Academy of Pediatrics’ motion to block HHS from implementing its Jan. 5 decision downgrading some childhood vaccines from “routine” recommendations to “shared clinical decision-making.” Many public health experts say the latter category downplays the benefits of those immunizations without any scientific basis.
The decision deals a blow to Kennedy’s efforts to remake U.S. vaccine policy to more closely reflect his view — contradicted by myriad scientific studies — that many shots routinely recommended to children pose more dangers than the medical establishment cares to admit. He has associated the childhood schedule’s expansion since the late 1980s to a rise in chronic conditions, ranging from autism to eczema, despite scientific consensus rejecting a link.
Murphy’s ruling comes a month after Kennedy’s department saw a senior leadership shakeup in which Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and General Counsel Mike Stuart left their posts as the White House attempts to shift the focus ahead of the midterms away from vaccines, which the public overwhelmingly supports, toward priorities with widespread voter buy-in, like lowering prescription drug costs. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine official who worked to overhaul that agency’s approval framework for Covid vaccines and was eyeing others, will leave that agency next month.
Presidentially-appointed officials and Congress have “formalized” the ACIP’s evidence-backed approach to vaccine recommendations in agency documents and in law by determining which shots are covered by insurers, Murphy wrote in his opinion. That means, he said, “there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made.”
In not following that process, the federal government has “undermined the integrity of its actions,” he added.
Richard Hughes, the lead attorney for the AAP and other groups that sued Kennedy, praised the decision for acknowledging “the importance of science, the scientific method” and efforts over decades by the anti-vaccine movement to undermine public confidence in shots.
Still, HHS could appeal Monday’s ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. And Hughes acknowledged that the administration could “theoretically” try to appoint new members who aren’t covered by the decision. It doesn’t apply to two advisers whom Kennedy appointed to the ACIP last month.
“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” department spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email.
President Donald Trump has directly targeted Murphy in social media posts; the Biden-appointed judge has drawn the administration’s ire for ruling against its immigration priorities.
The decision freezes the appointments of 13 ACIP members made by Kennedy between June and January, as well as all votes they’ve taken. The secretary, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before taking over the federal health department last year, overhauled the panel by stacking it with a supermajority of vaccine-skeptical members.
The panel had been scheduled to discuss and possibly vote on recommendations related to Covid vaccine injuries, long Covid and ACIP’s recommendation methodology, which, under Kennedy, has deviated from the evidence-based framework long used by previous iterations of the group. The issues are well outside the usual purview of the committee, which is tasked with advising the CDC when to change its vaccine schedules.
The ruling also blocks the department’s landmark January decision to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule. While the authority to require vaccines for school and daycare entry rests with individual states, federal recommendations made by ACIP and the CDC trigger public and private insurance requirements.
Most private payers have previously vowed to cover those vaccines with no cost-sharing to beneficiaries through the end of the year, but questions have persisted around how the insurance industry would treat such preventive measures in the future. Medicare and Medicaid, which cover older and low-income Americans, respectively, continue to cover vaccines.
“Routine” recommendations — meaning the default position is for a health care provider to vaccinate an individual — for kids and for pregnant women also trigger a process by which the manufacturers and administrators of those vaccines are largely shielded from legal liability. The January schedule change had yet to have an effect on pediatric vaccines that are covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, but public health experts fear that Kennedy could soon move to shake up the status quo.
The decision came nearly two weeks after the parties met for a second time in Murphy’s courtroom. The judge heard arguments March 4 on the remainder of the doctors’ case, which challenges the validity of the committee’s new membership under Kennedy.
In February, Murphy held a hearing on the groups’ bid to enjoin the new vaccine schedule and the ACIP meeting after the judge opted to split the proceedings to focus on the most time-sensitive requests first. At that point, the panel was expected to meet in February, but the meeting was postponed after the CDC missed legal deadlines to solicit public comment.