US judge blocks Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul US vaccine policy

By Jen Christensen, Jacqueline Howard, Deidre McPhillips, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked some of the sweeping changes US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made to reshape US vaccine policy, including an effort to shrink the number of vaccines recommended for children.

In his ruling, US District Judge Brian E. Murphy said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision in January to overhaul the US childhood vaccine schedule did not go through the proper legal channels and in doing so “undermined the integrity of its actions.”

Members of the medical associations that sued the government — the American Academy of Pediatrics and others — were harmed by those changes, as they would have to spend extra time counseling patients about the changes to vaccine recommendations, Murphy wrote.

“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” HHS Spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. Murphy, a Biden appointee, in March blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants to countries that were not their nations of origin.

The judge also ruled that Kennedy’s decision last June to fire all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replace them with his handpicked members was in violation of federal procedures.

The reconstituted committee had been scheduled to meet this week, but an HHS official told CNN the meeting will be postponed.

“ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet, for how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?” Murphy wrote.

Since 1964, all US vaccine policy has first run through ACIP, an independent panel of vaccine experts who evaluate the latest research to determine how safe and effective a vaccine is and the committee weighs in on who should get the vaccine. The CDC director is then supposed to take the committee’s advice into consideration in making a decision on whether to recommend a vaccine. Insurance companies and some states make coverage decisions based on this process. Kennedy did not run his decision to change the vaccine schedule through this committee. In court, the government had argued that ACIP is a “purely advisory entity.”

Government lawyers also argued that the US vaccine recommendations had been “a high outlier in the international community.” HHS said President Donald Trump recognized a “discrepancy,” and via a memorandum in December, directed Kennedy and the CDC to review the recommendations. HHS said it completed the review, and only then did the CDC make revisions to the vaccine schedule.

Last year, Kennedy described members of the previous committee as a “rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” despite detailed disclosures of conflicts of interest. Many of his handpicked members have expressed anti-vaccine views.

The judge’s decision says that while many of the recently appointed members “have extensive expertise in their chosen fields,” government committees that require technical expertise should “include persons with demonstrated professional or personal qualifications and experience relevant to the functions and tasks to be performed by the committee.”

The judge wrote “on this point there are glaring gaps,” with “even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful expertise in vaccines.”

Dr. Robert Malone, the co-chair of the ACIP committee, criticized the ruling today as “activist judicial intervention.”

“In a single order, a district court judge has purported to nullify the personnel decisions of a cabinet secretary, void the policy work of a federal advisory committee, and freeze a presidential directive issued pursuant to a direct executive memorandum,” an analysis posted by Dr. Malone said, noting the breadth of the intervention “should alarm anyone paying attention.”

The Independent Medical Alliance, a group affiliated with ACIP memember Dr. Kirk Milhoan, called the ruling “judicial overreach to the extreme” and claimed that the judge in the case “arbitrarily changed the rules without legal precedent.”

The lawsuit was initially brought by the AAP, the American Public Health Association, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a handful of individuals in July after Kennedy made changes to recommendations for Covid-19 vaccines also without input from ACIP.

Richard Hughes, the lead attorney for AAP, said in a briefing Monday that it was unclear what the ruling means in relation to the Covid vaccine changes.

In general Hughes said that he was “absolutely elated with the judge’s ruling.”

“I think what is notable about the opinion is it really, at the outset acknowledges the importance of science, the scientific method, it acknowledges what has been built, the apparatus that has been built around evidence-based vaccine recommendations over decades,” Hughes said.

AAP President Dr. Andrew D. Racine said the court’s decision should bring more clarity to the process of what vaccines the federal government should recommend.

“If we are going to have vaccine recommendations for the children and families of this country, it has to be based on science,” Racine said. “This is what the families of this country deserve, and this is what the children of this country have been relying on up until now.”

Until recently, AAP’s own vaccine recommendations for children had, for the most part, been in sync with the federal government’s. If caregivers have questions about vaccines going forward, Racine said it is important to discuss those issues with their child’s pediatrician.

“I would urge everyone out there to pay attention to this ruling, to pay attention to the recommendations that the Academy put out at the end of January, to follow that schedule, and then if there are any questions that arise, to speak with their pediatricians about what it means for their children,” Racine said.

Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians and a liason to ACIP, called Monday’s ruling “a win for public health.”

“Vaccines are critical to maintaining public health and recommendations about their use must be based on the best available data,” Goldman said. “Scientific consensus and overwhelming evidence demonstrate that vaccines are safe and effective. We are encouraged by today’s injunction and hope that it will mean a return to a transparent and evidence-driven process that safeguards the health of all communities and the best interests of our patients.”

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