A federal judge handed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a major loss, blocking changes to his vaccine policy, including a reduction in the number of recommended childhood immunizations and the restructuring of an important vaccine advisory panel, The Hill reported.
Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy gave the green light to a motion from the American Academy of Pediatrics for a preliminary injunction against HHS’s reduced childhood immunization schedule in early 2026, in addition to moving things around within the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The ruling invalidates all votes made by the committee since.
In his ruling, Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden,
found an ACIP reconstitution failed to abide by the Federal Advisory Committee Act and labeled CDC bypassing the ACIP when changing the childhood immunization schedule as both a “technical, procedural failure” and “an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”“The Court concludes that, in addition to being contrary to law, the issuance of the January 2026 Memo was arbitrary and capricious because it abandoned the agency’s longstanding practice of getting recommendations from ACIP before changing the immunization schedules without sufficient explanation,” the judge wrote in his ruling, in reference to the CDC’s announcement.
Controversy surrounding moves
made by Kennedy started shortly after being confirmed in 2025. In June, the secretary fired all 17 sitting members of the ACIP, claiming it was necessary to “re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”Kennedy then appointed new vaccine skeptics and critics to the committee. Since then, the new ACIP members voted in favor of no longer recommending birth doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, delaying the combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine, and pushing to no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for persons six months and older.
However, it should be left up to “individual-based decision making.”
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) celebrated the ruling on X, calling it “a win for science and medicine and a loss for Trump and RFK Jr.”
“Vaccines are safe and effective lifesaving tools,” he wrote. “RFK Jr. is a stain on public health, and I’m glad the courts ruled against his anti-vaccine madness.”
There may be some truth behind Schumer’s sentiments as the number of measles cases has increased, causing a major public health crisis in some states like South Carolina, where according to The Washington Post, the number of infections surpassed what Texas had in a year. Meanwhile, the U.S. has had its highest annual measles count in 33 years.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon released a statement saying the agency “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
But President Donald Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Dr. Casey Means, who recently declined to say whether she would encourage Americans to get vaccinated against the measles during a
February public hearing, is now speaking out in favor of the vaccine. Standing with the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, who urged Americans to “take the vaccine, please,” Means released a supportive statement.“I stand with Dr. Oz’s message to Americans to take the measles vaccine,” she said.
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