Breaking News: A judge blocked a series of vaccine decisions by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a major blow to his agenda.

In a severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda, a U.S. district court in Massachusetts on Monday blocked the government from implementing a series of decisions on vaccines made over the last year by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The court also reversed, at least for the time being, all decisions made by the panelists that Mr. Kennedy appointed to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on which vaccines Americans should take. The ruling prevents the panelists from meeting later this week as scheduled.

The ruling brought an abrupt halt to the major changes that Mr. Kennedy, who has long been skeptical of vaccines, had set in motion, upending national vaccine policy and making sweeping revisions to the recommendations for what shots are given and when. Those included cutting down the number of diseases covered by routine immunization, and restricting access to Covid vaccines, two pillars of Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.

Judge Brian Murphy delivered the ruling in a lawsuit brought by six medical organizations, contending that Mr. Kennedy and his appointees have made arbitrary and capricious changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, bypassing the careful, evidence-based practice that in the past has underpinned the recommendations.

The lawsuit also argued that the panelists Mr. Kennedy appointed did not have the qualifications to recommend vaccinations and that their decisions endangered the health of Americans.

Lawyers for the federal government, for their part, had argued that changes to the vaccination schedule represented reasonable disagreements about health policy. They noted that the states — not A.C.I.P. nor the federal government — are the ultimate authority in decisions about which vaccines are required.

Judge Strikes Down Kennedy’s Vaccine Policies
Ruling on a lawsuit brought by several prominent medical organizations, a district court said the federal government did not base its decisions on science in limiting Covid shots and changing the childhood immunization schedule.