As reported by the Washington Post on March 16, 2026:
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from implementing sweeping changes to the nation’s childhood immunization schedule, siding with the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other national medical and scientific organizations. AAP and the other plaintiffs argue that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unlawfully altered vaccine policy and improperly reconstituted a federal vaccine advisory panel. Under Kennedy, the federal government has cut the number of vaccines previously recommended to children, including for flu, hepatitis A, rotavirus and meningococcal disease. Kennedy had also dismissed all 17 members of the vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, installing new members, several of whom have criticized vaccines, especially covid-19 mRNA shots.
In his opinion, Judge Brian E. Murphy slammed the administration’s approach to revamping government recommendations for how and when children should be immunized. He said the government has undermined its history of recognizing “the importance and value” of involving independent experts in setting our national public health agenda and relying on “a method scientific in nature” to make such decisions.
The U.S. District Court judge from Massachusetts wrote that the government bypassed the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — which is how vaccine recommendations have been made for decades — to change the immunization schedule. He called it a “technical, procedural failure” and a “strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”
The pause on the administration’s actions are temporary as the dispute is expected to wind through multiple rounds of appeals, raising the prospect of a drawn-out court battle over who ultimately calls the shots on the scientific standards shaping federal vaccine recommendations.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
As health secretary, Kennedy — the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group — has made clear that he wants to overhaul the nation’s immunization system and argued the prior ACIP was plagued with conflicts of interest.
In early December, President Donald Trump ordered federal health officials to review the childhood immunization schedule, including recommending fewer vaccines to align with other developed countries. The judge wrote that HHS cannot circumvent the long-standing practice of getting advice from the federal panel without offering an explanation “simply because they are following the President’s orders.”
He also wrote that the government removed every member of the panel and replaced them without undertaking the “rigorous screening” traditionally used to select members.
The judge also paused all votes taken by Kennedy’s handpicked advisers. Some recent votes include moving from broadly recommending everyone 6 months and older get a coronavirus shot to instead advising Americans to first consult a clinician. The panel also voted to drop a recommendation that all newborns receive a vaccine for hepatitis B.
In court filings, the medical groups contend that Kennedy’s reconstitution of the vaccine panel was improper and that subsequent votes on vaccine recommendations — including changes affecting covid-19 and other routine childhood immunizations — were, therefore, invalid. They argued that the administration bypassed established procedure and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies make policy.
On Substack, Robert Malone, the committee’s vice chair and a prominent critic of coronavirus vaccines, called the opinion a “judicial overreach.” He wrote that there is a compelling “case for bringing intellectual diversity and fresh expertise” to the panel and for aligning vaccine recommendations with the practices of other nations.
The Immunization Coalition of Delaware, a program operating within the Delaware Academy of Medicine and Public Health, has opposed the administration’s anti-vaccine agenda, including the changes to COVID vaccination recommendations, the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, and the sweeping changes unilaterally developed by HHS under the “leadership” of RFK, Jr. The state of Delaware, likewise, has sided with the Northeastern States Public Health Coalition and the Governor’s Public Health Alliance and endorsed the immunization recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Immunization Coalition of Delaware aligns with the Delaware Chapter of the AAP in staunch support of existing AAP recommendations for childhood immunizations. ICD and the Academy will oppose any attempts by DHHS to overturn today’s ruling. Physicians and other health professionals in Delaware should continue to vaccinate children and adults as previously recommended and ignore the non-evidence based recommendations by RFK, Jr.’s DHHS.