HEALTH Mar 29, 2026

The Court That Stopped RFK Jr.: A Federal Judge Nullified His Vaccine Committee, Reversed the Childhood Schedule, and Called It All 'Arbitrary and Capricious'

On March 16, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked RFK Jr.'s entire restructuring of America's childhood vaccine policy — invalidating 13 hand-picked committee appointments, reversing a one-third cut to the vaccine schedule, and canceling a planned CDC meeting on COVID-19 vaccines. Two weeks later, RFK Jr. was at CPAC calling Trump an "empath." Here is what actually happened, and what it means for vaccine policy.

What Happened on March 16

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued a preliminary injunction blocking three major components of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s effort to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy.

First: the 13 members Kennedy had appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) since June 2025 — when he fired all 17 of the committee's previous members — were stayed. They can no longer serve on the committee in their appointed roles while the case proceeds.

Second: all votes taken by those 13 appointees were invalidated. That includes decisions to ban thimerosal from flu vaccines; to end the universal recommendation for the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and chickenpox vaccine; and to end the standard birth-dose recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine.

Third: the January 5, 2026 CDC action that cut one-third of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations — reducing the schedule from approximately 17 vaccines to 11 — was ruled "arbitrary and capricious" and blocked. Judge Murphy found that the CDC had acted without properly consulting ACIP, the statutory body it is legally required to consult under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).

"The government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions," Murphy wrote in the ruling.

What ACIP Is and Why It Matters

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the CDC's independent expert panel for vaccine recommendations. Since 1964, it has issued the official immunization schedules for children and adults in the United States. Its recommendations are not technically binding law — but they have enormous real-world force. Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are required by federal statute to cover all ACIP-recommended vaccines at no cost. Many private insurers and state vaccine mandates follow ACIP guidance directly.

When Kennedy fired all 17 sitting ACIP members in June 2025 — including immunologists, infectious disease physicians, epidemiologists, and pediatricians — he replaced them with a slate of individuals, several of whom had publicly expressed skepticism of vaccine safety or efficacy. Robert Malone, who describes himself as an inventor of mRNA vaccine technology and has been banned from some social media platforms for spreading health misinformation, was named co-chair.

Judge Murphy found that this process likely violated FACA, which requires that federal advisory committees be "fairly balanced" in terms of points of view and include appropriate technical expertise. Murphy concluded the new appointments were made "without a rigorous screening process" and that the resulting committee no longer complied with the law's balance requirements.

What the January 2026 Schedule Cut Did

On January 5, 2026, the CDC — acting on recommendations from Kennedy's reconstituted ACIP — reduced the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines from approximately 17 to 11. The six vaccines removed from universal recommendation included:

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — which represents 67,000 pediatricians — and other medical groups immediately filed suit. Their argument: the CDC lacked statutory authority to unilaterally revise the schedule without ACIP's proper input, and the committee that voted for the changes was itself unlawfully constituted.

Murphy agreed. His ruling reinstated the prior vaccine schedule pending the outcome of the underlying lawsuit.

What States and Insurers Actually Do with ACIP Guidance

The practical significance of ACIP recommendations varies by state. Under the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, the federal government purchases vaccines to distribute at no cost to low-income children. ACIP's recommended vaccines determine what the VFC program covers. Medicaid and CHIP coverage for vaccines is also pegged directly to ACIP's schedule under the Affordable Care Act.

Roughly 48% of American children are covered by Medicaid or CHIP at some point during their first years of life, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. For those children, removing a vaccine from the ACIP schedule can effectively eliminate insurance coverage for it overnight.

At least 18 states base their school immunization requirements directly on the ACIP schedule. Several others require only ACIP-recommended vaccines to be covered by state-regulated insurance plans without cost-sharing. Kennedy's January changes had therefore triggered cascading impacts on vaccine access in states that had not yet decoupled their laws from federal recommendations.

The court ruling blocked those changes. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco, told The Guardian that reinstating the prior schedule "will improve access in the many states which did not disconnect pharmacists' powers and insurance from ACIP."

The Trump Administration's Response

The Department of Health and Human Services said it would appeal. "HHS looks forward to this judge's decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing," HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement to NPR and other outlets.

The administration had argued before the court that Kennedy's authority to reshape HHS and its advisory bodies was unreviewable — a broad claim of executive authority that Murphy explicitly rejected. The Trump administration's lawyers had contended the personnel changes represented legitimate "different interpretations of vaccine data" rather than procedural violations.

The postponed ACIP meeting — which had been scheduled for March 18-19 and was canceled as a direct result of the ruling — had reportedly planned to examine purported long-term effects of COVID-19 vaccines. That meeting cannot now take place without a lawfully constituted committee.

What the Ruling Does and Doesn't Do

Murphy's ruling is a preliminary injunction — it blocks the challenged actions while the underlying lawsuit proceeds, but it is not a final judgment. The Trump administration can and has indicated it will appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Whether the injunction survives appeal is uncertain.

The ruling does not permanently restore the full ACIP membership or permanently block Kennedy from reforming the committee. If the administration reconstitutes ACIP in compliance with FACA — including through a transparent nomination process and a balanced membership — it would be on stronger legal footing to proceed.

The ruling also does not prevent Kennedy from advocating for changes to vaccination policy or from directing HHS research priorities. What it blocks, specifically, is implementing vaccine schedule changes through a committee that was not lawfully constituted.

"The future of the US vaccines landscape depends on what the government does next," vaccine law expert Dorit Reiss told The Guardian after the ruling.

Where RFK Jr. Is Now

Thirteen days after the ruling, Kennedy appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Grapevine, Texas on March 28, 2026. Speaking before a crowd that greeted him with chants of "We love you!," Kennedy reversed prior characterizations of President Trump.

"President Trump is exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be," Kennedy told the audience, according to Politico. He called Trump an "empath" — not a narcissist — and said the Democratic Party "had lost its bearings." Kennedy said Trump was more aligned with him on fighting chronic disease than liberals had been.

Kennedy also made claims about Trump's geographic knowledge that critics immediately challenged as fabricated. Raw Story and others noted that the claims lacked supporting evidence, with one X user summarizing Kennedy's sourcing as: "Source? I made it up."

The CDC turmoil inside HHS, first reported at length by AP, has continued. Multiple senior career officials have departed. The planned ACIP meeting remains postponed indefinitely while the legal appeal proceeds.

The Numbers