A coalition of major national public health groups filed a lawsuit Monday against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his vaccine policies.
The suit, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, a number of other health groups and a Jane Doe, seeks an injunction to halt Kennedy’s directive to remove the COVID-19 vaccination for children and healthy pregnant women from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunization schedule.
“Unless the Secretary’s baseless and uninformed policy decision is vacated, pregnant women, their unborn children, and, in fact, all children remain at grave and immediate risk of contracting a preventable disease,” the suit reads. “This decision immediately exposes these vulnerable populations to a serious illness with potentially irreversible long-term effects and, in some cases, death. This is not a hypothetical concern, but a pressing public health emergency that demands immediate legal action and correction.”
Removing an immunization from the schedule could possibly lead to insurers choosing not to cover it anymore. According to health policy publication KFF, vaccine coverage requirements are tied to HHS’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the CDC’s recommendations “in almost every case.”
“If ACIP or CDC vaccine recommendations were to be narrowed or removed, as was recently done in the case of COVID-19, most payers would no longer be required to provide no-cost coverage,” per KFF.
In a video posted to X in May, Kennedy said he “couldn’t be more pleased to announce” the change.
“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data, to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said in the video.
“That ends today,” said National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who stood alongside Kennedy and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary in the video.
The suit seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions to the vaccine recommendation changes. It was filed in U.S. district court in Massachusetts.
Kennedy has already made headlines in his first few months in office. After firing all 17 members of ACIP in June, Kennedy said at a press conference he wouldn’t appoint anti-vaxxers to replace them.
But in naming eight new members in June, he included the board member of a group widely considered to be a spreader of vaccine misinformation, and another who has promoted a number of unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19, claimed millions were “hypnotized” into getting the COVID-19 vaccines and suggested the vaccines can cause AIDS.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal announcing the changes, Kennedy wrote that the panel had been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
“The public must know that unbiased science guides the recommendations from our health agencies,” Kennedy added. “This will ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”