WASHINGTON ― National public health organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accusing him of flouting federal rules when he directed his agency to drop its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people.
The lawsuit, brought by groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, alleges Kennedy didn’t have the authority to unilaterally remove the vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization schedule. He announced he was doing so in a social media post in late May.
The groups argue Kennedy’s directive was akin to a final agency action, which is typically the result of a longer process required for making changes to CDC’s immunization schedules. The CDC’s so-called Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an intensely vetted group of public health experts, has long made recommendations for changes to this schedule. But Kennedy recently fired all 17 of ACIP’s members and replaced at least some of them with people who have baselessly cast doubts on vaccine safety.
“The Directive is in direct contradiction of multiple federal and state laws that require reliance on ACIP recommendations for the CDC immunization schedules, not the decisions of a single individual like the Secretary,” reads the lawsuit.
“The Directive was a final agency action justiciable under the Administrative Procedure Act, was arbitrary and capricious, and has caused irreparable harm to the Plaintiffs in this action,” the lawsuit continues. “That final agency action must be vacated.”
Other medical groups in the lawsuit are American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance and an anonymous pregnant woman, Jane Doe. A physician, she works in Massachusetts and is worried she won’t be able to get the COVID vaccine later in her pregnancy because of Kennedy’s directive.
The groups are being represented by Epstein Becker Green, which filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In addition to targeting Kennedy, they’re also suing Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
They’re asking the court for preliminary and permanent injunctions to halt Kennedy’s cancellation of the previous COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
Here’s a copy of their lawsuit:
Richard Hughes, one of the attorneys on the case, emphasized that the HHS secretary’s efforts to water down COVID-19 vaccine requirements are part of his broader effort to undermine science when it comes to the long-established safety and efficacy of vaccines. Kennedy is notorious for his decades of pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines, including the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and the baseless idea that COVID-19 is “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people.
“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America,” Hughes said on a Monday call with reporters. “If left unchecked, Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children.”
In addition to weakening COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and firing all 17 ACIP members, Kennedy has downplayed a deadly measles outbreak that began in West Texas. Instead of urging people to get vaccinated to protect themselves, he’s called the decision “a personal one” and baselessly implied that vitamins can prevent measles. Measles was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but under Kennedy, the current outbreak has exploded to at least 1,267 confirmed measles cases this year, just short of a 30-year high.
Hughes said all of Kennedy’s decisions on vaccines reflect his disdain for science and for abiding by federal rules.
“If he’s not relying on sound science, if we’re seeing pretext and bias and we’re running roughshod over really important, longstanding processes and procedures, that’s arbitrary and capricious,” he said. “That is unlawful.”
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy’s efforts to cast doubts about the safety of vaccines may be wholly unscientific, but they are having an effect. Pediatricians all over the country are reporting that parents now have “significant concerns about every single vaccine,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“This is causing uncertainty and anxiety at almost every pediatric visit that involves vaccines,” Kressly said on the same press call. “So this has significant impacts, especially as children head back to school and we immunize them over the summer season in preparation for that.”
Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, said he’s seeing the same thing in his own practice.
“Adults are confused about the difference between vaccines, between COVID versus flu versus pneumonia. They are hesitant to get their vaccines,” Goldman said on the press call. “They are not trusting the system anymore, and this has a direct impact on the health of our patients.”
“Because if they don’t get vaccinated, they can get sicker, they can end up hospitalized or even die,” he added. “And disease can spread to others.”
