Judge temporarily blocks key parts of RFK, Jr.’s effort to overhaul US childhood vaccines

Judge temporarily blocks key parts of RFK, Jr.’s effort to overhaul US childhood vaccines

By Claire Cameron edited by Tanya Lewis

A federal judge on Monday blocked large parts of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s sweeping overhaul of U.S. vaccine policy in a decision that joins six medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), that had challenged Kennedy’s rule changes in court.

US District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued a stay on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to drop the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines. The CDC had cut the number of diseases it recommended that all children be vaccinated against from 17 to 11. This decision, made in January, had been widely criticized by public health experts for putting children’s health at risk.

“I think from the point of view of the children and families of this country, they owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Judge Murphy, because he has now injected some clarity into what we should do with respect to vaccine recommendations that were a bit of a mess up until now,” Andrew Racine, the AAP’s president, said at a news conference after the ruling.

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The judge also blocked the appointment of 13 members of an influential independent vaccine advisory group called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) because that appointment likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In one of his first acts as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy fired all the former members of ACIP and replaced them. Additionally, Murphy’s ruling temporarily reverses all decisions made by panelists who had been appointed to ACIP by Kennedy. The medical organizations had argued in the lawsuit that Kennedy’s appointed ACIP members lacked the necessary qualifications to recommend vaccine policy.

“We’ve said all along, and we continue to say, if we’re going to have vaccine recommendations for the children and families of this country, it has to be based on science,” Racine said.

The panel was scheduled to meet on Wednesday to discuss vaccine policy recommendations, but after the judge’s ruling, the lead attorney for the AAP’s lawsuit questioned whether ACIP would do so.

“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to prevent the Trump administration from governing,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

Editor’s Note (3/16/26): This is a developing story and will be updated.

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