A challenge to US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s swift vaccine changes can advance, a Massachusetts federal judge said Tuesday, backing medical groups’ claims to harm from the policy shifts.
Judge Brian E. Murphy, of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to dismiss the action brought by a coalition of medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the Infectious Disease Society of America.
The ruling comes a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a streamlined vaccine list for children that eliminated six of 17 vaccines, a move the pediatrics groups called “dangerous and unnecessary.”
The organizations’ July lawsuit challenged Kennedy’s unexplained directive removing Covid-19 vaccines from the government’s official recommendation and firing and reconstitution of a federal panel that advises the nation’s vaccine policy, blasting the secretary as “throwing grenades into the health care system.”
The changes include a May removal of a federal recommendation for pregnant women and “healthy” children to receive the Covid vaccine, the June firing of all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the panel’s later reconstitution with members allegedly aligned with Kennedy’s “anti-vaccine agenda.”
Murphy’s order said the groups have standing to sue over the policy shifts in part due to legal threats Kennedy made to providers who stray from the new vaccine recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which urged patients and providers to discuss vaccines.
The secretary posted to social media a warning that the American Academy of Pediatrics, which released its competing vaccine list, should tell its members that its divergent recommendations “are not shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act.”
Department of Justice lawyers representing Kennedy and the administration later called any liability “entirely speculative,” but Murphy said that view misses the point.
“Defendants’ focus on the success of any potential legal action does not diminish Secretary Kennedy’s credible threat of the initiation of such legal action in the first place,” the judge said.
The court found the medical groups adequately claimed they were also harmed by having to divert resources to help members understand the administration’s new recommendations and its members can claim harm from having to spend uncompensated time consulting patients about vaccines.
The government failed to convince the court that the case is moot because the advisory panel’s September 2025 vaccine recommendations supplanted Kennedy’s May announcement. The secretary’s original directive is still in effect with respect to pregnant women, the court found, as the panel expressly declined to make changes to vaccines for the group.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, Richard Hughes IV of Epstein Becker & Green PC, said the ruling was a “validation for our plaintiffs that they are experiencing real harm following the Secretary’s unilateral change to the Covid-19 vaccine recommendation, and the abrupt reconstitution of the ACIP.”
“These actions bypass established scientific advisory processes, create confusion for parents and jeopardize access to life-saving immunizations,” Hughes said. “The continued pattern of disregard for science and due process reflects a troubling political agenda that prioritizes ideology over children’s health and public trust.”
Representatives for the government weren’t immediately available for comment.
The defendants are represented by the Justice Department.
The case is Am. Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy, D. Mass., 1:25-cv-11916, 1/6/26.
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