A federal judge appointed by former President Joe Biden obliged medical establishmentarians on Monday, blocking three critical elements of the Trump administration’s vaccine reform.
Brian Murphy — a Boston-based U.S. district court judge who previously barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting illegal aliens — paused Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the federal panel whose vaccine recommendations become official policy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
‘How much embarrassment can this Judge take?’
In addition to freezing out Kennedy’s ACIP appointees prior to their planned discussion of COVID-19 vaccines this week, Murphy also halted the health secretary’s reform of the child vaccination schedule as well as Kennedy’s May 2025 directive rescinding the recommendation that pregnant women and healthy kids get the COVID vaccine.
The shake-up
As of early 2025, all 17 members of the ACIP were Biden appointees.
Some of the members were brazen partisans. Oliver Brooks, for instance, made a habit of donating to Democrat candidates, including failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and called for research to be “intentionally antiracist.” Noel Brewer, a 2020 Biden donor, similarly demonstrated a DEI-lensed preoccupation with race.
Most members had collected small fortunes in consulting fees and research support from some of the very pharmaceutical giants whose products the panel had recommended, prompting questions about the members’ loyalties and commitment to public health.
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JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
Kennedy noted in a June 9 article, “The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
“It has never recommended against a vaccine — even those later withdrawn for safety reasons,” continued Kennedy. “It has failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women. To make matters worse, the groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust.”
On June 10, Kennedy announced that he had canned all 17 members of the ACIP, accused the panel of “malevolent malpractice,” and vowed to appoint “highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense.”
Medical establishmentarians melted down over the removal of the Biden holdovers.
Susan Kressly, who was the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at the time, said, “We are witnessing an escalating effort by the administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines.”
Their fury was compounded when Kennedy announced whom he was appointing to the newly vacant panel — experts such as Dr. Robert Malone, an early pioneer in messenger RNA technology, and Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth who ruffled feathers in 2021 by criticizing ruinous mask mandates for children.
In January, the Trump administration dealt those clinging to the status quo another upset, modifying the childhood immunization schedule.
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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Whereas previously, the CDC recommended that kids get vaccines for 18 diseases — loading them up with twice as many doses as their European counterparts — the Trump administration reduced its list of vaccination recommendations for all children to jabs for the following 11 diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus, and chickenpox.
The lawsuit
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups sued the administration in July over its termination of COVID vaccine recommendations for healthy kids and pregnant women, then amended their complaint to incorporate challenges to the ACIP shake-up and changes to the immunization schedule updates.
‘We will keep appealing these lawless decisions.’
Judge Murphy echoed the plaintiffs’ talking points in his ruling on Monday and said, “There is a method to how these decisions [about which vaccines to make available through insurers and government programs] historically have been made — a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
Murphy questioned the qualifications held by the majority of current ACIP members but spared his fellow Biden appointees who previously served on the panel from such scrutiny.
He also said that the ACIP, as currently staffed, violates Congress’ requirement that such committees “be fairly balanced.”
Murphy, opting for stays over injunctions, stayed Kennedy’s appointments of new ACIP members, all votes taken by the new ACIP members, and the January changes to the childhood immunization schedule.
The response
The medical groups behind the lawsuit celebrated Murphy’s ruling.
Andrew Racine, president of the AAP, called it “a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere.”
“This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years,” added Racine.
“Today’s ruling is a win for public health and reaffirms that national vaccine policy should be guided by rigorous, evidence-based science, not politics,” said Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians. “Scientific consensus and overwhelming evidence demonstrate that vaccines are safe and effective.”
The HHS said that it will appeal the ruling.
“We look forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” wrote HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche noted, “We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning. The question is, how much embarrassment can this Judge take?”
Dr. Robert Malone said that the “rogue judge” had “inserted himself between the elected executive branch and its constitutional authority to govern.”
Malone, who faced years of abuse for questioning the safety of mRNA vaccines and the severity of COVID-19, emphasized that “the political timing of this ruling is impossible to ignore” and that “the practical consequences of Monday’s ruling are serious.”
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