A Massachusetts judge called Kennedy’s efforts to reform the CDC’s vaccines advisory panel a “procedural failure,” adding that the new committee members do not “comport with governing law.”
A federal court has ruled against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., finding that his efforts to overhaul vaccine policy in the U.S. were likely unlawful.
In particular, Judge Brian Murphy of the District Court for Massachusetts, flagged Kennedy’s move in June last year to empty the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), calling it a “procedural failure” that “highlights the very reasons why procedures exist.”
Kennedy then “summarily replaced” the ACIP members “without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades,” Murphy added in his 45-page ruling on Monday. This failure to abide by established procedures “raises a substantial likelihood that the newly appointed ACIP fails to comport with governing law,” the judge said.
Indeed, several observers have pointed out that the new ACIP is populated by people who, like Kennedy, are skeptical of vaccines. The committee’s current vice chair, Robert Malone, has previously testified in front of Congress, for example, that mRNA vaccines “cause cancer and heart disease and autoimmune disease, even though it doesn’t,” former ACIP panelist Paul Offit told BioSpace in a June 2025 interview.
In response to the ACIP overhaul, the American Academy of Pediatrics sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in July last year, alleging that Kennedy had violated the law in reforming the ACIP, had put Americans in harm’s way and eroded the public’s trust in vaccines. HHS had sought to have the suit dropped, but Murphy in January brushed that motion aside.
In a post on his Substack shortly after the Monday ruling, Malone blasted Murphy’s decision, calling it an “activist judicial intervention” that “deserves serious scrutiny from anyone who believes in democratic accountability.”
Malone also expressed confidence that the order will be reversed: “A district court order is a delay, not a defeat,” he wrote. “The administration has strong grounds for appeal.”
Aside from the ACIP changes, Murphy’s ruling on Monday also addressed Kennedy’s decision in May 2025 to remove COVID-19 vaccines from the routine immunization guidelines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. At the time, the secretary had yet to replace the ACIP with experts who shared his skepticism toward vaccines.
“The Government bypassed ACIP to change the immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure itself and a strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee,” Murphy wrote.
Since Kennedy’s change to the COVID recommendations, the CDC, with guidance from Kennedy’s reformed ACIP, has enacted more changes to long-standing immunization policy. In October 2025, the agency removed the recommendation that all children under four years of age be vaccinated for chickenpox, leaving that decision up to parents instead. In December, the CDC delayed hepatitis B vaccination from the 30-year-long standard of giving it at birth to now dosing children no earlier than two months of age unless their mothers test positive for the virus.
In January, the pediatric vaccine schedule was further revamped, reducing the number of recommended routine immunizations from 17 to 11. That decision apparently came at the behest of Kennedy’s close ally, President Donald Trump.
In response to Monday’s ruling, Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the HHS, told STAT News that the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.” On Monday, an appellate court suspended Murphy’s prior ruling that found the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation policies unlawful.
ACIP’s next meeting is set to begin tomorrow.
