By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping efforts to upend U.S. immunization policies are set to go before a federal judge in Boston who already has drawn President Donald Trump’s ire for impeding his administration’s policies on multiple fronts.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on Friday is due to hold a hearing in a legal challenge by medical groups that assert that Kennedy and the agencies he oversees are unlawfully reshaping federal policies in ways that will increase barriers to getting vaccinated, fuel distrust in shots and lower immunization rates.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, was appointed by the Republican president last year as the U.S. government’s top health official. His critics have said Kennedy’s actions on vaccines and other areas will undermine public health.
APPOINTED BY BIDEN
Murphy was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, confirmed by the U.S. Senate and joined the federal bench in Massachusetts in December 2024, the month before Trump returned to the presidency.
Murphy has earned the scorn of Trump’s administration after issuing a series of rulings that blocked core parts of his hardline immigration agenda, prevented it from gutting funding for federal research and halted its efforts to prevent the further development of offshore wind energy.
The judge is a former public defender who previously ran a small criminal defense law firm based in Worcester, Massachusetts. He told lawyers at an event last week he “had not anticipated some of the more nationwide cases that have been a part of the practice, here in Massachusetts especially.”
Cases with national significance have been piling up on the dockets of Massachusetts-based judges like Murphy, as Trump opponents strategically funnel litigation into the federal court in Boston now dominated by the judicial appointees of Democratic presidents.
VACCINE PANEL OVERHAUL
At Friday’s hearing, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiffs are expected to ask Murphy to issue a preliminary injunction that would prevent the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from implementing a revised childhood immunization schedule and block Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory panel from holding its February 25-26 meeting.
They argue the CDC acted unlawfully when on January 5 it reduced the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations to 11 and downgraded the immunization recommendations for six diseases, including rotavirus, influenza and hepatitis A.
They also are challenging Kennedy’s decision last year to remove and replace all 17 independent experts who previously had served on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, whose recommendations shape U.S. vaccine practices.
The plaintiffs said that resulted in a panel dominated by vaccine skeptics appointed solely because their views aligned with those of Kennedy.
Murphy in a ruling last month allowing the case to proceed said those allegations were “sufficient to plausibly suggest the committee is neither fairly balanced nor free of inappropriate influence,” in violation of the requirements for such panels set out in a U.S. law called the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Justice Department lawyers argue that the plaintiffs are seeking a court-ordered ban on the Department of Health and Human Services “receiving and giving advice on vaccines.” They say the CDC’s guidance on vaccines is a matter of agency discretion, and that Congress in requiring “balance” for the panel meant employment status and background, making it irrelevant if most of its members now hold anti-vaccine views.
The reconstituted ACIP panel voted in September in favor of abandoning the U.S. government’s broad recommendation for COVID-19 shots, essentially recommending patients consult their doctors first. It then voted in December to remove the broad recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine. The plaintiffs want those votes and others voided.
Global health experts have said vaccines are vital for controlling infectious diseases, preventing millions of deaths annually and lowering healthcare costs. Kennedy has called vaccine safety data flawed and has claimed vaccines are responsible for various health issues.
The public health groups argued that the newly adopted U.S. changes will depress vaccination rates for shots that have long depended on clear and population-wide guidance, particularly in busy primary-care settings where default recommendations drive uptake.
‘OUT OF CONTROL’
Another major Trump-related case Murphy has handled involved a lawsuit by immigrant rights advocates seeking to prevent the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from rapidly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without letting them raise any concerns about potential persecution or torture.
Murphy issued and enforced a court order to restrict the administration’s efforts to deport migrants of other nationalities to countries such as South Sudan, Libya and El Salvador.
Trump derided Murphy as “out of control,” and White House advisor Stephen Miller called the judge a “lunatic.” At the administration’s urging, the Supreme Court intervened twice, lifting Murphy’s injunction and clearing the way for the deportation of several men to South Sudan.
Murphy has signaled he is open to ruling against this “third country” deportation policy again as the case proceeds, and he has continued to deal the Trump administration other courtroom setbacks.
In October, Murphy ruled that the Pentagon’s steep cuts to federal research funding for universities were unlawful.
In January, the judge allowed the Vineyard Wind joint venture to resume its Massachusetts offshore wind project, one of five judicial rulings nationwide that blocked the administration from halting wind projects on national security grounds.
Days later, Murphy issued an order temporarily blocking the administration from ending temporary deportation protections covering more than 5,000 Ethiopians living in the United States.
“I’m sure when you imagined your first months on the bench, you expected a quiet start, where you’d learn the ropes,” Democratic U.S. Senator Ed Markey said in video remarks played at Murphy’s formal swearing-in ceremony in September. “But as the saying goes, sometimes the judiciary has plans for you.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
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