A powerful medical organization and its backers won a legal victory last week in an ongoing struggle against federal efforts to alter vaccine recommendations and return decision-making to parents.
On March 16 U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a ruling that effectively halted the government’s lead vaccine recommendation group from meeting and stayed vaccine recommendations published under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other left-wing medical groups sued Kennedy in July in response to his removal of pregnant women and healthy children from the Covid-19 vaccine recommended list. The group then amended its suit, filing multiple complaints challenging Kennedy’s reconstituted immunization advisory panel and its votes. The AAP also challenged the revised pediatric schedule that the CDC published in January, which aligned the U.S. schedule with most developed nations by removing six vaccinations from the current schedule.
The American Academy of Pediatrics requested a ban on Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meetings; Murphy acquiesced in part, granting a stay on the ACIP appointment rather than an injunction, the same day the Supreme Court stayed another of his decisions. The March meeting of ACIP, at which the committee was poised to address Covid-19 vaccine injuries and recommendation processes, is now indefinitely postponed.
“The same day he is stayed for repeatedly refusing to follow the law, he issues another activist decision,” wrote Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on X. “We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning.”
In his 45-page ruling, Murphy wrote that the government has “undermined the integrity of its actions” by sidestepping ACIP in the vaccine schedule revision process and replacing members without the use of “rigorous screening.” The newly appointed members, Murphy wrote, represent a “procedural failure … that … fails to comport with governing law.” Violation of the Administrative Procedure Act will likely be proven, he concluded.
Responding to Murphy’s decision, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that the department “looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned” in a statement to The Defender.
Hellbound and Down 