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The appointment of a controversial slate of vaccine advisers by Robert F Kennedy Jr likely violated federal law, and all votes taken by the committee over the past year have been stayed, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) is not able to meet later this week, since its membership has been invalidated, the judge said. The meeting has been postponed, an HHS official said.
The unprecedented changes to routine US immunization recommendations in January, when health officials unilaterally changed one-third of the schedule, were “arbitrary and capricious” and were also blocked, the court found.
Judge Brian E Murphy ruled on a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“This is a major victory,” said Richard Hughes IV, one of the lawyers representing the AAP.
When Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP in June and replaced them with his own hand-picked advisers, many of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views, the health secretary likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the judge found.
For that reason, the 13 appointments were stayed by the judge, essentially invalidating their role on the committee.
All votes made by those advisers are also invalidated, including decisions to ban thimerosal (thiomersal) from flu vaccines; ending the recommendation for the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and chickenpox vaccine; and the end of the universal birth dose recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine.
“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” said HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon.
The future of the US vaccines landscape depends on what the government does next, said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert and professor at UC Law San Francisco. “They will likely appeal and try to challenge it on standing. And I don’t know how the higher courts will go on that.”
But in the meantime, reversing the January changes to vaccine schedule “will improve access in the many states which did not disconnect pharmacists’ powers and insurance from ACIP”, Reiss noted, pointing to the states that based vaccine recommendations and coverage directly on the committee’s recommendations.
At the now postponed meeting, the ACIP planned to focus on purported long-term effects after Covid vaccination, according to a leaked memo first reported by the New York Times on Sunday.
Robert Malone, co-chair of the committee, on Monday decried the leak, saying on Twitter/X: “There is a cascade of unintended consequences playing out now and I have no idea where it all goes … but nowhere good.”
The ACIP under Kennedy “continues to try and push unscientific and dangerous misinformation about vaccines, the result of his mass firing of qualified members and replacing them with unqualified hacks”, said Elizabeth Jacobs, a member of Defend Public Health and an epidemiologist, in a statement.
