On March 16, 2026, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston blocked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule, ruling in a preliminary injunction that Kennedy and his reconstituted vaccine committee had made arbitrary and capricious decisions that likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Kennedy had fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June 2025 and replaced them with his own appointees. Of the 15 current members, Murphy wrote that most appear “distinctly unqualified,” and that “even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful expertise in vaccines.” In January 2026 the CDC had cut the number of diseases children are routinely recommended to be vaccinated against from 18 to 11, dropping the recommendation that all babies be protected against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, RSV, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis.
The ruling was sweeping: it stayed the new schedule, stayed the appointments of 13 of Kennedy's 15 ACIP appointees, and stayed the votes the reconstituted panel had taken since June 2025, including its vote to drop the universal hepatitis B birth dose. Murphy wrote that vaccine policy had been built through “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” and that the government “has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which brought the lawsuit with other medical and public health groups, called it “a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere.” An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll taken weeks earlier showed the trust problem Kennedy faced: only 38% of adults were confident he provides trustworthy public health information, while 77% were confident in the AAP to make public health recommendations. NPR called the ruling a major blow to the administration's vaccine agenda. HHS filed a notice of appeal to the First Circuit on April 29, 2026.
Correction (October 14, 2026): This entry previously said the new schedule cut recommended childhood vaccinations from 16-18 to 10-11; NBC News corrected its own reporting to say the CDC cut the number of diseases vaccinated against from 18 to 11, and the entry now uses that figure. It said the judge “invalidated” the 13 appointments and “voided” all votes; the order stayed them. It quoted the judge as saying only six members had “any meaningful experience in vaccines”; CNN's quotation of the ruling reads “meaningful expertise in vaccines.” A quotation beginning “There is a method to how these decisions historically have been made” could not be found in any source and has been replaced with the ruling's words as reported. The Annenberg figure for Kennedy was 38%, not 40%. The title said the panel as a whole was “distinctly unqualified”; the judge applied that to most of its members. A claim that the injunction remained in effect with no appellate decision as of August 2026 has been removed because no source confirmed the appeal's status.