A federal judge has blocked changes to the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule pushed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, delivering a major legal setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the nation’s immunization guidelines.
The ruling halts a reshaping of childhood vaccine policy that began last May, when Kennedy started making changes to the recommended schedule. Those changes culminated in January, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) narrowed the number of universally recommended vaccines from 17 to 11.
The legal pressure came from two directions. First, a group of medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, and an individual doctor sued Kennedy after the CDC stopped recommending COVID shots for healthy children and pregnant women. Earlier this year, those same plaintiffs moved to block the new childhood immunization schedule.
Then, in February, 15 Democrat-led states went further, filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to undo the schedule changes and challenge what they called the “unlawful replacement” of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the expert panel that traditionally guides vaccine policy. The suit names Kennedy, the CDC, and the agency’s acting director, Jay Bhattacharya, as defendants.
The legal battles over America’s childhood vaccine schedule are far from over, with the states’ lawsuit heading toward a preliminary hearing and the fate of the reformed ACIP panel still in question.
Recent Comments