Societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, allege that Kennedy’s directive to remove COVID-19 from vaccination guidelines for healthy pregnant women and healthy children puts these vulnerable groups at risk of serious illness.
A group of professional organizations have sued Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other health leaders in an attempt to reverse recent changes made to COVID-19 vaccination guidelines.
The suit, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, is in response to Kennedy’s May decision to remove COVID-19 shots from the routine immunization guidelines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. The lawsuit called this move a “baseless and uninformed policy decision,” one that “immediately exposes these vulnerable populations to a serious illness with potentially irreversible long-term effects.”
According to the plaintiffs—a coalition of medical societies including, among others, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America—Kennedy’s changing the COVID-19 vaccine guidelines is “but one example” of his “agenda to dismantle the longstanding, Congressionally-authorized, science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure.”
The suit is asking the court to declare Kennedy’s directive unlawful and an “abuse of discretion.” The changes to the immunization guidelines should also be reversed, according to the plaintiffs, who are also requesting an injunction that would bar Kennedy and other health officials from enforcing the recommendations under contention.
“The Secretary’s dismantling of the vaccine infrastructure must end, and halting this effort begins with vacating the Directive,” the lawsuit read.
Alongside Kennedy, the lawsuit also names as defendants FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. Makary and Bhattacharya appeared alongside Kennedy when he announced the recommendation changes in May.
Monday’s lawsuit adds to the growing pile of legal complaints against Kennedy and his sweeping overhaul of the Department of Health and Human Services. Last month, for instance, seven fired employees at the department sued the Secretary, claiming that their terminations were based on “error-ridden” information.
A month earlier, 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, filed a complaint against the HHS over the cuts at the department, alleging that Kennedy has “systematically deprived HHS of resources necessary to do its job.” The court ruled earlier this month in favor of the plaintiffs, suspending mass layoffs at the agency. “The executive branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” the judge wrote.
Similarly, a Massachusetts judge last month ruled against the wholesale termination of research grants at the NIH, writing that the Trump administration’s cutting of research funding for certain research programs is not only “arbitrary and capricious,” but also a clear example of “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
