By Jennifer Porter Gore

(WIB) – A federal judge in Boston has put the brakes on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s vaccine policy because Kennedy’s agency likely violated an 80-year-old bureaucratic rule when it started changing vaccine guidelines last spring. 

In issuing the preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled in favor of a coalition of public health organizations — and a pregnant doctor — that sued HHS after Kennedy changed COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.

The ruling is a positive development for Black Americans, who made up around 18% of all COVID pandemic cases — accounting for two out of every 10 deaths. What’s more, Black children infected with the virus were twice as likely as white kids to be hospitalized and more than five times as likely to be admitted to intensive care for treatment. Only 13% of the U.S. population is Black.

HHS bypassed established processes 

Dr. Andrew P. Racine, president of American Academy of Pediatrics, hailed the ruling. The AAP, along with the American Public Health Association and several more medical groups sued HHS because Kennedy’s changes to COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women ignored the approved process and the changes were not based on science.

Murphy’s ruling was “an important step toward restoring scientific decision-making that is at the heart of that partnership,” Racine said in a statement. “Protecting the health and safety of America’s children is what prompted the AAP to petition the court for this decision from the outset and that goal will remain our guiding principle.” 

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Dr. Georges Benjamin, CEO of the nonprofit American Public Health Association, concurred. 

The injunction “underscores the need for using science in public health decision-making and using a process that engages qualified experts” when it comes to interventions that affect health, Benjamin said in a statement. Public trust is important, he said, but it occurs only  “when we engage the public in a transparent process — not one where decisions are made behind closed doors by unqualified individuals and presented in a disingenuous way,” said Richard Hughes IV, the attorney who represented the AAP, told the Associated Press.

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Murphy’s ruling states the changes Kennedy announced beginning last May likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a 1940s-era rule that requires any policy changes at a federal agency to be made through a transparent, participatory process. Kennedy also ignored that rule, the judge found, when he reconfigured a key federal advisory board that guides policy on clinical use of vaccines. 

Murphy agreed with the plaintiffs that Kennedy’s agency overlooked the way such policies have historically been made and failed to use “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,” he wrote.

The organizations and the doctor — who works in a hospital and alleges a pharmacy denied her request for a COVID booster shot despite her high risk of exposure to infectious diseases — sued the federal government over its decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most pregnant women and children. 

The suit also accused HHS of ignoring established science when making the changes. The groups amended the suit this January when the agency upended the childhood vaccine schedule by reducing the number of recommended vaccines from 17 to 11. 

The ruling also temporarily blocks all decisions made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel Kennedy packed with individuals who either aren’t scientists or are known anti-vaxxers shortly after taking office in 2025. 

The appointments for more potential members are also on hold and the panel, which was scheduled to hold a two-day meeting this week, is now prevented from meeting,