A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked major alterations to U.S. vaccine policy advanced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including moves to scale back federally recommended childhood immunizations.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a stay Monday on actions taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel after finding that Kennedy had improperly replaced the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Murphy found the administration bypassed the long-established scientific procedure used to develop vaccine guidance, undermining the integrity of those decisions.
The ruling pauses the appointments of 13 members Kennedy named after dismissing the previous ACIP roster in June 2025. Several of the new appointees, who have been publicly critical of vaccines, had backed a number of controversial recommendations — one of which would advise that all newborns receive a hepatitis B shot at birth. A two-day ACIP meeting scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, expected to address COVID-19 vaccines and broader changes to how federal vaccine policy is determined, was postponed.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics along with other medical groups and was supported by infectious disease experts. “Today’s ruling is a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the pediatric academy. Richard Hughes, counsel for the plaintiffs, called the decision “a significant victory for public health, evidence-based medicine, the rule of law, and the American people.”
The Department of Health and Human Services said it intends to appeal. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon criticized the judge’s intervention and said the department looks forward to overturning the ruling.
The order halts immediate implementation of the advisory panel’s recent recommendations and leaves the future of the contested policy changes to the appeals process and further legal review.