By Jen Christensen, Jacqueline Howard, CNN
(CNN) — A federal judge on Monday blocked some of the sweeping changes US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made to reshape US vaccine policy, including an effort to shrink the number of vaccines recommended for children.
In his ruling, US District Judge Brian E. Murphy said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision in January to overhaul the US childhood vaccine schedule did not go through the proper legal channels. Members of the medical associations that sued the government — the American Academy of Pediatrics and others — were harmed by the changes, as they would have to spend extra time counseling patients about changes to vaccine recommendations, Murphy wrote.
“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” HHS Spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. Murphy, a Biden appointee, in March blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants to countries that were not their nations of origin.
The judge also ruled that Kennedy’s decision last June to fire all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replace them with his handpicked members was in violation of federal law.
The reconstituted committee had been scheduled to meet this week, but an HHS official told CNN the meeting will be postponed.
“ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet, for how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?” Murphy wrote.
Last year, Kennedy described members of the previous committee as a “rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” despite detailed disclosures of conflicts of interest. Many of his handpicked members have expressed anti-vaccine views.
The judge’s decision says that while many of the recently appointed members “have extensive expertise in their chosen fields,” government committees that require technical expertise should “include persons with demonstrated professional or personal qualifications and experience relevant to the functions and tasks to be performed by the committee.”
The judge wrote “on this point there are glaring gaps,” with “even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful expertise in vaccines.”
The lawsuit was initially brought by the AAP, the American Public Health Association, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a handful of individuals.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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