By Jacob Rosen
Updated on: March 16, 2026 / 8:04 PM EDT
A federal judge blocked a set of changes to the childhood vaccine schedule pushed by allies of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dealing a setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape federal vaccine policy.
In an opinion issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiffs who challenged Kennedy and HHS’s moves to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines. The lawsuit, filed last year by a coalition of medical groups and doctors, argued the agency’s decisions were arbitrary and capricious and unlawfully bypassed established procedures.
Months after his confirmation, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel that has advised the Centers for Disease Control on vaccine schedules since 1964. Several of his new appointees have questioned established vaccine research. Earlier this year, HHS significantly scaled back the recommended childhood immunization schedule, cutting the number of routine recommended vaccines from 17 to 11 and reclassifying several others — including hepatitis A and hepatitis B — as primarily for children at high risk. Public health groups criticized the change, saying it could create confusion and leave children vulnerable to serious disease.
Murphy’s ruling halted a government memo that enacted the new schedule, froze the appointments of 13 new ACIP members and voided all votes taken by the reconstituted panel. He found that Kennedy’s actions violated federal law and granted the injunction sought by the medical organizations, which argued the administration had sidestepped evidence-based recommendations.
“There is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Murphy wrote. “Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
The judge said the government had bypassed ACIP when updating the schedule, disregarding the committee’s technical knowledge and expertise, and that the new ACIP members were appointed without a rigorous screening process. Of those appointees, Murphy wrote, “even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful experience in vaccines.”
Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, praised the decision, saying it reaffirms a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations and is a critical step toward restoring scientific decision-making in federal vaccine policy that has protected children for years.
An HHS spokesman said the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”
Following Murphy’s ruling, HHS postponed the upcoming ACIP meeting that had been scheduled for later this week.