By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – A coalition of major medical organizations urged a federal judge on Wednesday to reject the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss their lawsuit challenging policies adopted under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy that they say will lower vaccination rates.
James Oh, a lawyer for groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, told U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that Kennedy “is throwing grenades into the healthcare system,” during a hearing in Boston.
“And when you throw a grenade, people are going to get hurt,” Oh said.
He said Kennedy, as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, unlawfully directed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May to remove the COVID shot recommendation for pregnant women and children from its vaccination schedules without any advance notice or reasoned explanation.
In June, Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, fired 17 independent experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC on vaccine policies, and replaced them with members who largely support his views.
That committee in September voted in favor of COVID-19 shots being administered only through shared decision-making with a healthcare provider, essentially calling for patients to consult their doctors first.
The CDC adopted that as a recommendation for pediatric and adult patients in October, in the process withdrawing what had been the broad recommendation that the COVID shots be available for anyone in the U.S. who wanted one.
The medical groups, in a lawsuit that has evolved substantially since it was first filed in July, say that the panel was unlawfully reconstituted in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s requirements that such a committee be “fairly balanced” and not “inappropriately influenced” by the appointing official.
The plaintiffs say that as a result, all the votes that the committee has taken since June should be voided, which would cover more recent ones such as its vote earlier this month to remove the broad recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine.
Isaac Belfer, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told Murphy that the medical groups lack legal standing because they had not shown they were harmed by the CDC merely advising patients to consult their doctors before getting a shot.
“What they really have is a policy disagreement,” Belfer told Murphy. “But that policy disagreement in how an agency is operating does not allow you to bring a lawsuit.”
Oh, a lawyer at Epstein Becker & Green, countered that the groups are harmed by having to divert significant time from other initiatives to advise and counsel their doctor members on new, “confusing” vaccine policies that “dropped like a bombshell.”
Murphy, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, said he found some of the plaintiffs’ standing arguments “pretty compelling,” particularly considering a social media post Kennedy made in August after the American Academy of Pediatrics released its own vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy, in that post, said the group “should also be candid with doctors and hospitals that recommendations that diverge from the CDC’s official list are not shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act.”
“If the secretary told them they face legal liability,” Murphy asked Belfer, “isn’t that an injury?”
Murphy said he aims to rule on the motion to dismiss a week before a previously-scheduled January 12 hearing in the case. Should the case survive the dismissal motion, Oh said his clients plan to seek “very expedited” relief ahead of the vaccine panel’s next meeting, which is set for February 25-26.
The case is American Academy of Pediatrics et al v. Kennedy, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:25-cv-11916.
For the plaintiffs: James Oh of Epstein Becker & Green
For the United States: Isaac Belfer of the U.S. Department of Justice
Read more:
US physician groups sue Kennedy over vaccine policy
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)
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