By Frankie Sanchez
Correspondent
Judge Brian Murphy of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, recently blocked the implementation of several new policy decisions regarding vaccines made by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his appointed panelists on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices and the Centers for Disease Control.
“Ruling on a lawsuit brought by several prominent medical organizations, a district court said the federal government had not based its decisions on science in limiting Covid shots and revising the childhood immunization schedule,” according to The New York Times.
In response to the block, Andrew Nixon, speaking for the Department of Health and Human Services, expects the ruling to be appealed and overturned.
“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” Nixon said.
Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration have maintained that their proposed changes are based in good-faith and reasonable disagreement with current policy. Lawyers for the administration also noted that the final decision on health recommendations within each state is up to that state’s own discretion.
The federal government retains the ability to promote its own recommendations, and Kennedy and the ACIP have “unreviewable” authority to make vaccine policy, according to Isaac Belfer, a lawyer for the Trump administration. Murphy dismissed this argument in his ruling.
Murphy’s ruling was based on a lawsuit brought on by six medical organizations that refuted and rejected the reasoning and evidence for the planned changes in vaccination policies particularly childhood vaccinations, calling their changes, “arbitrary and capricious.”
Such changes included removal of several recommendations for childhood vaccinations, including for diseases such as Hepatitis B.
Murphy alleges that only 15 of the panelists on Kennedy’s advisory committee have any “meaningful experience in vaccines – the very focus of the ACIP.”
The ruling also temporarily reverses decisions regarding recommended vaccinations made by panelists on the ACIP , who were appointed by Kennedy. The decisions included what vaccines are to be recommended by the federal government, and a restriction on the access to COVID-19 vaccinations.
Murphy said in his decision that in spite of the precedent for “A method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements…” the Trump administration “...has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
The lawsuit Murphy ruled on was initially filed in July 2025, with plaintiffs including organizations such as the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, among others.
The medical organizations involved in the suit requested the court restore the guidelines from before Kennedy’s revisions.
After the initial filing, the suit was expanded to include the CDC’s additional changes to recommend shots for children, reducing the amount from 17 to 11.
With the plaintiffs asking for these changes to be reversed, as the CDC enacted these changes without consulting with the ACIP at all, an act “contrary to the law,” according to Murphy.
Richard Hughes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs called the ruling, “a significant victory for public health, evidence-based medicine, the rule of law, and the American people.”
