A federal judge in Boston dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s yearlong effort to change American vaccine policy on Monday, temporarily blocking many of the administration’s moves from going forward.
In a 45-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy largely sided with six medical organizations that last year sued the Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over the department’s changes to its vaccine recommendations, including a January memo that reduced the number of universally recommended vaccinations from 17 to 11. The lawsuit claimed the HHS changes violated federal law.
Murphy on Monday called the January edict “arbitrary and capricious because it abandoned the agency’s longstanding practice of getting recommendations from [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] before changing the immunization schedules without sufficient explanation.” The advisory committee, known as ACIP, is a panel operating under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which makes recommendations about how vaccines should be used in the U.S., based on the latest research.
“The CDC cannot simply bypass ACIP in altering the immunization schedules,” Murphy wrote.
At the time it issued the memo in January, HHS defended its process by arguing it was fulfilling the orders of President Donald Trump, who weeks earlier had directed HHS to align America’s vaccine recommendations with the best practices from peer countries.
Murphy also temporarily blocked the appointments of many of Kennedy’s handpicked members of ACIP, saying the appointees “appear distinctly unqualified.”
Last summer, Kennedy abruptly dismissed all 17 sitting members of the committee and began replacing them with his own picks, many of whom have expressed vaccine-skeptical views.
Murphy temporarily blocked 13 of Kennedy’s newly appointed ACIP members from participating in future committee meetings. However, his ruling did not apply to the two newest members of ACIP, whose appointments were announced last month.
In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told MS NOW, “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.