A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked most of the damage that anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to federal vaccine guidance in his time in office.
In a 45-page ruling that opens with a quote from science communicator Carl Sagan, US District Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary injunction that blocks:
- The federal vaccine advisors Kennedy appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) after firing all 17 expert members. Almost all of Kennedy’s new advisors hold anti-vaccine views, have questionable qualifications for being on the committee, and did not appear to go through standard vetting.
- Every vote those ACIP members have made to change federal vaccine guidance.
- Kennedy’s dramatic overhaul of the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule in January, which dropped the number of recommended immunizations from 17 to 11, in line with Denmark, and was done without consulting ACIP.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with several other medical groups, against Kennedy. The groups challenged the legality of the unprecedented moves, which disregarded standard procedures and lacked the backing of scientific evidence.
“Today, faced with Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the reconstitution of ACIP and the January 2026 changes to the childhood immunization schedule violate the Administrative Procedure Act,” Judge Murphy wrote.
Reviewable
Earlier this month, US Department of Justice lawyer Isaac Belfer, defending Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), argued that Kennedy’s actions as health secretary were wholly “unreviewable.” More specifically, Belfer claimed that Kennedy could, without question, advise Americans to actively infect themselves with measles rather than get a vaccine against the disease if he wanted.
Murphy, however, determined that Kennedy’s actions were, in fact, reviewable.
In his consideration of the case, Murphy noted that ACIP has been providing expert guidance on vaccine use since 1964 and that HHS has formalized it as a nonpartisan, science-based committee in its governance documents. Congress, in turn, recognized the importance of the independent experts by cementing its role in setting CDC vaccine guidance.
“This is all to say that there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Judge Murphy wrote.
“Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” he wrote. “First, 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. Second, the Government removed all duly appointed members of ACIP and summarily replaced them without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades. Again, this procedural failure highlights the very reasons why procedures exist and raises a substantial likelihood that the newly appointed ACIP fails to comport with governing law.”
Rebuke of ACIP members
The judge also blasted the firing of past ACIP members, the apparent lack of vetting for new members, and the lack of qualifications of the members, naming names.
“First, of the fifteen members currently on ACIP, even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful experience in vaccines—the very focus of ACIP,” he wrote (emphasis his).
“At least six ACIP members—Dr. Hillary Blackburn, Dr. Evelyn Griffin, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, Dr. James Pagano, Dr. Raymond Pollak—appear to lack any expertise or professional qualifications related to vaccines or immunization as required by ACIP’s Charter,” he wrote. “An additional three of the current ACIP members—Dr. Retsef Levi, Dr. Robert Malone, and Dr. Catherine Stein—though they have some experience arguably relevant to ACIP’s function, appear to lack the qualifications and experience to constitute expertise in vaccines and immunization.”
In all, Judge Murphy argued that Kennedy’s hand-selected advisors fail to meet the requirements of ACIP’s charter, which states members must be knowledgeable in relevant fields. They also fail to meet federal regulations requiring advisory boards to be “fairly balanced” in representing the views within those relevant fields.
“A committee of non-experts cannot be said to embody ‘fairly balanced… points of view’ within the relevant scientific community,” he wrote. “It is more accurate to say that they do not represent points of view within the relevant expert community.”
The ruling lands, as expected, days before Kennedy’s ACIP planned to meet (March 18–19) to discuss alleged COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
Responses to ruling
In a statement today, Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics celebrated the ruling, saying:
Today’s ruling is a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere. 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 against these dangerous actions that have sown chaos and confusion for parents and pediatricians across the country. This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years.
Advocacy group Defend Public Health also applauded the ruling, while calling for continued vigilance. “Today was important, but this battle against Kennedy’s public health malpractice is far from over,” epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs, who is a committee member for the group, said. “We’re going to keep a close eye on whatever ACIP does next and stand ready to continue to support the plaintiffs any way we can and to call out RFK Jr.’s anti-science nonsense.”
In a statement emailed to Ars Technica, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
In his opening to the ruling, Murphy countered that the executive branch and Congress have built a US public health apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the federal government—both of which require procedural rules.
“‘Science,’ like law, ‘is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge,’” Murphy wrote in his ruling, quoting Sagan. “Nevertheless, science is still ‘the best we have.’”
