Frustrated by a recent, dramatic overhaul of the U.S. childhood immunization schedule, 15 Democrat-led states have sued the Trump administration in a bid to undo those changes as well as what they alleged to be an “unlawful replacement” of a key vaccine panel.
The lawsuit, filed by 14 attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania, seeks to rescind the new schedule adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services and vacate the committee, known as ACIP, reformed last year by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the agency's acting director, Jay Bhattacharya, are named as defendants in the suit.
“The Trump Administration’s attacks on science are irresponsible and dangerous. Undermining confidence in vaccines will lead to lower vaccination rates and more infectious disease. It will also drive up costs for states, including increased Medicaid spending and new expenses to combat misinformation and revise public health guidance,” said California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, in a statement. “Public health decisions must remain grounded in truth and facts.”
Following a Trump directive, the CDC in January suddenly upended the U.S.’ longstanding immunization schedule, narrowing the number of universally recommended shots to 11 from the previous 17. The agency claimed that the move was made to more closely align the U.S. with certain other wealthy nations, such as Denmark, and blamed the 17-shot schedule for declining vaccination rates.
Yet the sudden shift in policy bypassed the typically rigorous scientific debate among independent reviewers and was based on comparisons to countries with different population sizes and health systems.
The new schedule “will damage public health by decreasing vaccine uptake and increasing rates of vaccine-preventable diseases, including by creating confusion, spreading misinformation contrary to established scientific evidence, and increasing vaccine hesitancy,” the plaintiffs charged in the lawsuit.
Last year, Kennedy — who founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense — abruptly fired all members of the ACIP panel and replaced many of its members with skeptical views of vaccines. That panel has since weakened support for multiple immunizations.
The committee was originally scheduled to convene this week, but the meeting was tabled after the agency missed a legal federal deadline to notify the public ahead of time, according to Stat News. A two-day meeting is now scheduled to begin on March 18.
Several prominent medical groups have pushed back against ACIP’s new recommendations and even released guidelines that reflect the previous schedule.
The government has also been previously taken to court over its shifts to vaccine policy. Last year, a handful of medical organizations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — and a doctor sued Kennedy after the CDC stopped recommending COVID shots for healthy children and pregnant women.
Earlier this month, the plaintiffs in that suit attempted to block the new childhood immunization schedule and halt the now-delayed ACIP meeting.
Following the postponement, Richard Hughes, a partner at the law firm Epstein, Becker & Green and counsel for the plaintiffs, said in an email to clients the move “injects more confusion, uncertainty, and dysfunction into the American healthcare system” and is an “attempt to delay a decision” from the court.
