By Nate Raymond, Ahmed Aboulenein and Leah Douglas
BOSTON, March 16 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday blocked key parts of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effort to reshape U.S. vaccine policy, including a move to reduce the number of shots routinely recommended for children, and revamp a federal advisory committee on inoculations.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups, which said health regulators had acted unlawfully to carry out Kennedy’s agenda of upending immunization policies and warned the changes will reduce vaccination rates and harm public health.
Murphy’s ruling forced the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to postpone a meeting set to begin on Wednesday, after he concluded it was not lawfully constituted and blocked Kennedy’s 13 appointees to it.
The ruling dealt a significant setback for the reduced childhood vaccination schedule championed by Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist appointed last year by President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The Trump administration will likely appeal the decision.
Murphy said that for decades, the U.S. had been focused on the eradication and reduction of diseases using vaccines, which were developed through “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements.”
Under Kennedy, Murphy said, the government “has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
The judge, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, blocked Kennedy’s 13 ACIP appointees from continuing to serve in their positions and upended votes they had previously taken to reshape vaccine policies.
“This is a great victory not only for vaccines and public health in the United States, but for science,” said Richard Hughes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, on a call with reporters.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
RULING INVALIDATES COMMITTEE VOTES
The plaintiffs had argued that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acted unlawfully on January 5, when it cut the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations to 11 and downgraded the immunization recommendations for six diseases, including rotavirus, influenza and hepatitis A.
Murphy agreed, saying the CDC lacked authority to unilaterally change the immunization schedule in January without consulting ACIP, which makes recommendations that shape U.S. vaccine practices and insurance coverage.
And he said the committee itself was unlawfully constituted and no longer complied with the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s requirements for balance after Kennedy last year removed and replaced all 17 independent experts who previously served on the panel.
The plaintiffs said the panel was now dominated by people aligned with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views, and Murphy said that of 15 current ACIP members, most appear “distinctly unqualified.”
Only six appear to have any meaningful experience in vaccines, he said, even though the panel’s own charter requires that its members have expertise in the use of vaccines and vaccine research.
“A committee of non-experts cannot be said to embody ‘fairly balanced… points of view’ within the relevant scientific community,” Murphy wrote, citing the regulations governing advisory panels.
Murphy said because it was unlawfully constituted, earlier votes by the panel to downgrade recommendations for hepatitis B vaccines for newborns and COVID-19 shots broadly were also invalid.
The judge has earned the scorn of Trump and his allies for repeatedly blocking administration initiatives, including core parts of the Republican president’s hardline immigration agenda.
MAHA GROUPS DECRY RULING
Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice argued that while HHS welcomed debate about vaccine policy, Kennedy and officials under him had broad authority to change it to address what they said was a decline in public trust in vaccines following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Groups aligned with Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement like Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group co-founded by Kennedy, and the Independent Medical Alliance, characterized the decision as judicial overreach and argued that the changes advocated by the committee should not be controversial.
Most ACIP members did not respond to requests for comment. Member Robert Malone called Murphy a “rogue judge” and said the administration has strong grounds for appeal.
Public health experts and associations cheered the ruling.
“ACIP had fallen into such disrepair that everyone had started to ignore it. But its proclamations still had legal heft,” said Dr. Noel Brewer, a vaccine expert at the University of North Carolina who was removed from the panel by Kennedy. “This court ruling puts public health back on the right path.”
VACCINE MAKERS AND PARENTS WARY
Vaccine makers have grown increasingly wary of U.S. vaccine policy, including the makers of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna. Companies that make other shots on the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule include Merck, Sanofi and GSK.
While the judge largely ruled for the plaintiffs, he declined at this time to block Kennedy’s May order that the CDC stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.
Shares of Moderna closed 1.4% higher on Monday, while others including Pfizer, Merck and U.S.-listed shares of British drugmaker GSK closed marginally higher.
As Kennedy’s policies have taken hold, pediatricians have faced parents increasingly skeptical about vaccines and medical treatments, while nearly a dozen states have begun considering legal changes that would relax vaccine requirements for school enrollment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Writing by Leah Douglas; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Daniel Wallis and Bill Berkrot)
