6 Leading Medical Organizations Team Up To Sue RFK Jr Over COVID-19 Vaccine Policy

Six of the US’s most prominent medical organizations and an unnamed physician have teamed up to sue health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as well as the heads of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH), over what’s been called a “baseless and uninformed” decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. 

Kennedy announced that decision earlier this year, posting on social media platform X that as of May 27, “the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from [the CDC’s] recommended immunization schedule.”

“Bottom line: it’s common sense and it’s good science,” Kennedy wrote.

Not everyone agrees. “These decisions are founded in fear and not evidence,” said Susan J. Kressly, M.D., FAAP, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in a statement.

The AAP is one of the seven plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on July 7, joined by the American College of Physicians (ACP), American Public Health Association (APHA), Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Massachusetts Public Health Alliance (MPHA), Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), and an anonymous pregnant physician who is at risk of catching COVID-19 but unable to get a booster.

“I will say this is unprecedented,” said Richard Hughes, partner at Epstein Becker Green and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, per The Hill. “Our clients are not litigious organizations. They don’t want to be in court, and certainly we do not like that we’re in the position of having to sue the Secretary of Health and Human Services, our nation’s chief health officer.”

“So this is a position that I don’t think they want to be in, but it’s necessary.”

In the lawsuit, the group calls for a judge to declare Kennedy’s decision as unlawful, and to bar the heads of the CDC, FDA, and NIH from “enforcing, publicizing, or otherwise encouraging” the health secretary’s decision. They also ask for the restoration of the CDC’s previous COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children aged 6 months to 17 years old.

The plaintiffs argue that “unless the Secretary's baseless and uninformed policy decision is vacated, pregnant women, their unborn children, and, in fact, all children remain at grave and immediate risk of contracting a preventable disease.”

“This decision immediately exposes these vulnerable populations to a serious illness with potentially irreversible long-term effects and, in some cases, death,” the suit continues. “This is not a hypothetical concern, but a pressing public health emergency that demands immediate legal action and correction.”

According to the CDC’s COVID-19 data, 12,725 deaths in the US have been attributed to COVID-19 this year, as of the week ending June 28.

Kennedy has not personally responded to the lawsuit, though a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told The Hill: “The Secretary stands by his CDC reforms.”