A federal judge has denied the Department of Health and Human Services' motions to dismiss a lawsuit challenging last summer's COVID-19 vaccine recommendation changes and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overhaul of a key vaccine advisory panel.
Judge Brian Murphy, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, wrote in a memo and order Jan. 6 that the case's healthcare provider plaintiffs have sufficient standing to survive a dismissal. He also wrote that "at this stage of the litigation," the plaintiffs' allegations that the new composition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Council on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is unfairly balanced toward skeptics of COVID-19 vaccines and mRNA vaccines more broadly are plausible.
Plaintiffs in the case are the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, as well as three individual healthcare providers.
They had first filed the lawsuit over the summer in response to COVID-19 vaccine guidance changes they said were not based in scientific evidence, and then updated the suit in November (see that story below) to request that the reconstituted ACIP and its subsequent recommendations be tossed.
The government filed multiple motions to dismiss primarily challenging the plaintiffs' standing to bring the case, the most recent of which was filed in November after the suit was expanded. Those motions have now been terminated with Tuesday's order.
“Today’s ruling moves our case forward and reinforces our commitment to challenge unlawful changes to vaccine policy,” AAP President Andrew D. Racine, M.D., said in a statement for the AAP's news publication. “The American Academy of Pediatrics will continue to take all necessary actions to safeguard children’s health. We brought this suit because our nation’s vaccine policy must be driven by evidence and lawful process, not by arbitrary shifts divorced from science.”
Racine, in that article, went on to criticize the CDC's recent move to slash the number of universal childhood vaccines it recommends. The AAP and other medical groups "said they are exploring all available options in response to these unprecedented changes," according to the article.
Nov. 6
Providers' lawsuit against RFK Jr. now asks court to nullify ACIP's recent vaccine recommendations
A cadre of provider associations that sued Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the summer over COVID-19 vaccine recommendation changes have expanded their litigation to encompass the immunization advisory panel he overhauled earlier this year.
The plaintiffs filed an updated complaint Wednesday that focuses on the reconstitution of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Council on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel of independent experts relied on by the agency to chart changes in vaccine recommendations. All 17 members of the ACIP were fired by RFK Jr. in June and have since been replaced by appointees who, like RFK Jr., predominantly hold vaccine safety criticisms.
The provider associations’ amended complaint describes the new appointees as unqualified and improperly appointed. It asks the court to declare the recommendation votes ACIP made that were later adopted by the CDC—including a change for adults from routine COVID-19 vaccination to “shared clinical decision making”—to be vacated, and for the advisory group to again be remade in line with statute and the ACIP Charter (PDF).
“The current ACIP is not fairly balanced, is not acting independently and is being inappropriately influenced by the Secretary, as evidenced by the ACIP’s discussion and votes at the June and September, 2025 meetings that promoted an anti-vaccine agenda,” the plaintiffs wrote in their amended complaint.
“Further, the Secretary appointed new ACIP members not based on relevant experience or credentials as required by the ACIP Charter, but instead based, upon information and belief, on whether their views on vaccines align with the Secretary’s. Accordingly, the appointments of the current ACIP members are not in accordance with law, were arbitrary and capricious, and must be declared null and void,” they wrote.
Plaintiffs in the case are the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
When first filing their suit over the summer, heads of some of the groups said their members and their patients faced confusion over access to COVID-19 vaccinations due to the HHS secretary’s statements and policy changes that were not based in scientific evidence.
The AAP reiterated those concerns this week, saying in a release on their amended filing that the shared clinical decision-making recommendation lacked guidance for families and clinicians—and has led to vaccine denials, heightened stress and insurance coverage uncertainty.
“Pediatricians have seen firsthand the harm created by the disruptive and politicized decisions to overturn decades of evidence-based federal guidance on immunizations,” AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., said in a statement. “These changes have caused fear, decreased vaccine confidence, and barriers for families to access vaccines.”
The groups’ amended lawsuit argues that RFK Jr.’s rationale for dismissing the existing ACIP, that they held “persistent conflicts of interest,” was pretextual. Promises he made that new appointees would be accompanied by releases on their financial disclosures and ethics agreements remain unfulfilled, they wrote, while alleging that RFK Jr. required all candidates “to be a registered Republican or Independent and could not have previously made public criticisms of the President or the Secretary.”
While the lawsuit outlined public statements and testimonies from RFK Jr. the plaintiffs said undermine public confidence in vaccines, the accompanying press release also noted the ACIP’s September discussions on potentially delaying the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine as “a move designed to sow distrust in vaccines … even though these issues have been studied extensively and monitored continuously.”
RFK Jr., who, prior to his appointment, had promoted vaccine skepticism and maintained ties with anti-vaccine groups, has largely painted the nation's existing structure for gauging and reporting vaccine safety as flawed. He’s also alleged that healthcare associations such as the plaintiffs suppress members’ vaccine safety concerns due to undue pharmaceutical industry influence.
Allegations that the secretary has sought to replace experts and longtime civil servants with those who share, or at least permit, his skepticism came to a head shortly before the ACIP’s September meeting when CDC Director Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was fired from her role and testified before the Senate. Monarez and Debra Houry, M.D., formerly the chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, told lawmakers that RFK Jr. had dictated several public health policies without consulting with staff scientists.
“CDC scientists have still not seen the scientific data or justification for this change,” Houry said in September of the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation change at the heart of the lawsuit. “That is not gold-standard science.”
The policy and messaging changes coming out of RFK Jr.’s HHS have led professional groups and institutions to launch their own public health guidances that are sometimes in conflict with federal recommendations. For instance, the AAP in August published an immunization schedule for infants, children and adolescents that includes a recommendation for all young and at-risk children to receive COVID-19 vaccination.
“The Secretary’s actions have made it significantly harder for people to get vaccinated, sown unfounded doubt in vaccines and contributed to mistrust of medical science knowledge for infectious diseases including COVID, measles and hepatitis B,” said Ronald Nahass, M.D., president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, another plaintiff group. “This is leaving individuals, healthcare systems and communities increasingly vulnerable to severe disease and destabilizing outbreaks. Our nation’s infectious diseases physicians will not allow this dangerous injustice to stand.”