The ruling also places a stay on Kennedy’s appointments to a vaccine recommendation panel within the CDC.
By Chris Walker ,
Truthout
March 17, 2026
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends the signing of an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on December 18, 2025
.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Image
Afederal judge has placed a temporary injunction on new vaccine rules for children established earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), finding that the panel that had recommended them to the agency was improperly appointed by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The order issued on Monday by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy also vacates previous decisions by the panel in question, and suspends, for the time being, several members due to their lack of qualifications.
In December, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted on recommending changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of vaccines from 17 to 11. Vaccines removed from those previously recommended included hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The changes also lessened the number of vaccine doses recommended to prevent human papillomavirus (HPV).
ACIP made those changes just half a year after Kennedy disbanded the previous iteration of the board, and filled its vacancies with individuals who shared many of his anti-vaccine views. In January, the CDC formally adopted the new recommendations.
Health officials in the Trump administration have justified the changes by claiming they further align the U.S. with vaccine recommendations for children in European countries. But health experts — including some from Europe — have said that such an approach flouts the scientific method.
Afederal judge has placed a temporary injunction on new vaccine rules for children established earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), finding that the panel that had recommended them to the agency was improperly appointed by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The order issued on Monday by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy also vacates previous decisions by the panel in question, and suspends, for the time being, several members due to their lack of qualifications.
In December, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted on recommending changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of vaccines from 17 to 11. Vaccines removed from those previously recommended included hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The changes also lessened the number of vaccine doses recommended to prevent human papillomavirus (HPV).
ACIP made those changes just half a year after Kennedy disbanded the previous iteration of the board, and filled its vacancies with individuals who shared many of his anti-vaccine views. In January, the CDC formally adopted the new recommendations.
Health officials in the Trump administration have justified the changes by claiming they further align the U.S. with vaccine recommendations for children in European countries. But health experts — including some from Europe — have said that such an approach flouts the scientific method.
One expert said Kennedy’s pick once met with her to discuss his research, but came with his own “agenda” instead. By Chris Walker , Truthout March 12, 2026
“I do not think this makes sense scientifically,” Anders Hviid of Denmark’s Statens Serum Institute said at the time. “Public health is not one size fits all. It’s population-specific and dynamic. Denmark and the U.S. are two very different countries.”
Reacting to those changes, several U.S.-based health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians, and the American Public Health Association, filed a lawsuit against HHS, accusing Kennedy of “packing” the ACIP board so that it would produce opinions he favored, rather than issuing recommendations based on scientific study and vigorous debate. The lawsuit decried the changes made to the childhood vaccine schedule, deeming them both “harmful” and “unlawful.”
In issuing his ruling, Murphy agreed with the plaintiffs, finding that HHS and the Trump administration had disregarded methods for picking ACIP members that were “scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements.” The decision to disband ACIP last year and replace its members with persons mostly agreeable to Kennedy’s views “undermined the integrity” of the panel’s decision-making process, Murphy also wrote in his ruling.
Murphy found that Kennedy’s process had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which includes in its text a rule requiring federal advisory committees to be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed” relating to whatever federal agencies they provide guidance for.
In his ruling, Murphy explained that:
For our public health, Congress and the Executive have built — over decades — an apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the United States government. … [T]here is a method to how these decisions historically have been made — a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.
Kennedy had improperly assembled the new ACIP board by appointing board members who were nearly unanimous in their anti-vaccine views — and thus, their vote on changing the vaccine schedule should be voided, Murphy said.
In addition to invalidating the changes to childhood vaccine recommendations, Murphy voided other votes that ACIP has made since last year. He also stayed the appointments of 13 ACIP members Kennedy selected, finding that they were not adequate for the purposes of advising the CDC on the issue of vaccines.
“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,” Murphy wrote in his decision.
He also noted that, of those six, three members lack the “expertise” needed to study vaccines and immunizations — including MIT mathematician Retsef Levi, who has no health background whatsoever and whose research has been widely criticized for pushing an “agenda.”
The stay of more than a dozen ACIP members’ appointments to the panel means that it is effectively stalled from making other health decisions at this point.
The Trump administration criticized the ruling, and a spokesperson for HHS said the department planned to appeal.
A lawyer representing the health groups that brought forward the lawsuit praised Murphy’s decision.
“This is a significant victory for public health, evidence-based medicine, the rule of law, and the American people,” lawyer Richard Hughes said in a statement. “The government may appeal this decision, and we have much more work to do to achieve a full victory on the merits. But for now, we get to celebrate a rare bit of good news.”
AAP president Andrew Racine also lauded the ruling, stating that ACIP was influenced by Kennedy’s views rather than scientific evidence.
“When Secretary Kennedy made unsupported and unscientific changes to pediatric immunization recommendations last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 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,” Racine said. “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.”
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