Federal Judge Blocks RFK Jr.'s Attempt to Gut Childhood Vaccine Schedule

A federal judge on Monday issued a sweeping preliminary injunction blocking Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s plan to dramatically scale back the nation's recommended childhood vaccine schedule, ruling that the proposal was likely unlawful and posed an imminent threat to public health. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, based in Maryland, found that Kennedy had overstepped his statutory authority in attempting to reduce the recommended immunization list from 18 diseases to 11.

The blocked plan would have removed vaccines for hepatitis B, hepatitis A, meningococcal disease, HPV, rotavirus, pneumococcal disease, and influenza from the childhood schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy had argued the changes were necessary to reduce what he called an excessive burden on children's immune systems — a claim that the American Academy of Pediatrics and virtually every major medical organization in the country has rejected as scientifically unfounded.

Judge Murphy's 47-page ruling also blocked 13 new appointments Kennedy had made to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the expert panel that has guided U.S. vaccine policy for decades. The appointees included several prominent vaccine skeptics with no formal training in immunology or epidemiology. The judge wrote that the appointments appeared designed to engineer a predetermined outcome rather than to provide genuine scientific counsel.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which led the legal challenge along with 22 state attorneys general, hailed the ruling as a critical victory for children's health. AAP President Dr. Benjamin Hoffman said in a statement that the injunction prevents what would have been the most dangerous rollback of childhood disease prevention in modern American history. Pediatricians across the country had warned that the changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases that have been effectively controlled for decades.

Kennedy's office said it would appeal the ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and accused the judge of substituting his own judgment for that of public health officials. The HHS secretary has made reshaping federal vaccine policy a centerpiece of his tenure, repeatedly questioning the safety of widely used immunizations despite overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary.

Public health experts said the legal battle is far from over but expressed relief at the immediate outcome. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, noted that even the uncertainty created by the proposal had already caused a measurable dip in vaccination rates. CDC data released last week showed that childhood immunization coverage for the 2025-2026 school year fell to 91.2 percent nationally, down from 93.1 percent the previous year — a decline that epidemiologists warned could push several communities below the threshold needed for herd immunity.