A lawsuit filed Monday by a coalition of medical professional groups alleges that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. barred registered Democrats from serving on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, has functioned for decades as an independent expert panel that helps guide the federal government’s decisions on immunizations. But in June, Kennedy — who has for years peddled anti-vaccine misinformation — fired all 17 panel members.
Kennedy claimed the firings were needed to “re-establish public confidence in vaccine science” and appointed eight new members to the panel, including several anti-vaccine activists.
The lawsuit, filed by a coalition that includes the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, alleges Kennedy’s May directive to remove Covid-19 vaccination recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women from the CDC’s immunization schedule, which was made without ACIP’s input, violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the directive unlawful and to order Kennedy to restore the Covid vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children to the CDC immunization schedules.
Buried within their 42-page complaint, the plaintiffs allege that candidates for the new ACIP “had to be a registered Republican or Independent” to qualify for membership. And those candidates “could not have previously made public criticisms” of Kennedy or President Donald Trump.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the lawsuit.
Dismissing candidates based on their political affiliations or criticism toward the Trump administration is unlikely to help with accusations of bias hurled at HHS since Kennedy began leading the department in February.
“I fear that there will be human lives lost here because of this,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement following Kennedy’s hiring of ACIP members.
“It is a special kind of irony that he is saying he is doing this to restore trust, given that he is, as an individual, more responsible for sowing distrust in vaccines than almost anyone I can name,” he added.
