There has been a whirlwind of activity surrounding federal vaccine policy over the past few weeks and especially the past two days.
The most important and impactful recent update is the decision from a federal judge Monday that temporarily stayed multiple decisions made by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which Kennedy fully replaced after firing the original committee members last June.
What happened
This decision prevents ACIP from meeting March 18-19 as initially planned. Here are the key points and what they mean for the general public:
This is an interim (temporary) decision in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) et al. v. Kennedy et al. case. Plaintiffs argue that HHS circumvented the law when Kennedy replaced all ACIP members last year and made multiple changes to the recommended immunization schedules without following usual procedures, calling all vaccine recommendations made since May 2025 into question. The AAP is arguing that “these actions undermined public trust, disrupted clinical practice, and threatened public health,” according to spokesperson Annalise Carol in a media briefing announcement.
The decision does three things:
Temporarily blocks Kennedy’s appointment of 13 new members to the ACIP because the appointment likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Blocks all votes that the newly constituted ACIP has made.
Prevents the current ACIP from meeting until the case is resolved or another motion removes the temporary stay.
The judge did not explicitly say that ACIP cannot meet, stating that it was not appropriate for the court to determine whether they could meet or not. Rather, the judge said that, since the appointments of the new ACIP members are stayed, “ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet” because those stays mean the current members were not actually validly appointed and there would not be enough members for a quorum.
Overturned recommendations
The stay on vaccine recommendations and other decisions made by ACIP since its reconstitution and by HHS since May 2025 means that all the changes made to federal vaccination policy since last spring are undone:
The Jan. 5 overhaul of the childhood immunization schedule made by HHS without ACIP is not currently valid. The schedule reverts to the CDC’s guidance prior to May 2025, which matches the AAP’s recommended schedule that nearly all medical professionals have been following for children’s vaccines anyway.
Insurance companies had continued to cover all vaccines whose recommendations ACIP had removed, but there was concern that some may have or eventually would have stopped coverage. This ruling assures that insurance companies are still required to cover all the same vaccines they were covering in January 2025 under requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Coverage under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Vaccines for Children program will also continue for all vaccines that they covered in January 2025.
Before this decision, ACIP appeared poised to overhaul how Covid vaccine injuries are tracked, based on a leaked report the New York Times released on March 15. In an AHJC/E-VAT webinar on March 17, comments from Miles Braun, M.D., addressed the actual data on Covid vaccine safety. The webinar also explains the evidence-to-recommendation framework that the previous ACIP — before Kennedy was head of HHS — used for evaluating the risks and benefits of vaccines and making recommendations.
What your audience needs to know
No evidence on vaccine effectiveness or vaccine safety has changed this year.
All vaccine recommendations in effect at the end of Biden’s presidential term remain currently in effect, and any changes made by the CDC, the ACIP, or HHS more broadly since May 2025 are not currently valid.
This decision does not affect FDA *approvals* in any way, but it does affect changes to vaccine policy the FDA may have announced (which was never part of FDA’s role and has always been the role of the CDC).
Insurance, CMS, and Vaccines for Children are legally required to continue covering all vaccines they were covering as of January 2025.
What’s not yet known
This decision is a temporary stay, and the final verdict of the case has not been decided. To learn more about the next possible actions that could occur, refer to the discussion from Richard Hughes, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs (AAP), in the AHCJ/E-VAT webinar from March 17.
Tara Haelle is AHCJ’s health beat leader on infectious disease and formerly led the medical studies health beat. She’s the author of “Vaccination Investigation” and “The Informed Parent.”
