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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking nominations for another round of new members to sit on a key CDC vaccine advisory panel.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been unable to meet for nearly a year, after a federal judge temporarily suspended new appointments made to the panel last year by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after he took office.
ACIP advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine recommendations.
In June 2025, Kennedy dismissed all 17 sitting ACIP members, citing their financial ties to Big Pharma, and appointed new members.
The committee, which typically meets three times a year, hasn’t met since December 2025 — the last meeting before a scheduled March 18 meeting. On March 16, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the March meeting, disbanded the committee and suspended changes the new committee made to the CDC’s recommended childhood immunization schedule.
Murphy ruled that some ACIP members Kennedy appointed lacked the legally required expertise in vaccines. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and several other medical groups who sued Kennedy and HHS over changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.
The groups later amended their lawsuit several times in response to new HHS and CDC policies and recommendations.
Kennedy and HHS appealed Murphy’s March ruling. The appeal is pending.
Earlier this month, lawyers for HHS and Kennedy asked a federal appeals court to allow the committee to return to work. During oral arguments in the ongoing AAP lawsuit, the government’s lawyers asked the court to overturn Murphy’s ruling.
“We’re asking the court to vacate the order on the [ACIP] appointments, so that the Secretary can reconstitute the committee and get it back to work,” Matthew Zorn, deputy general counsel for HHS, told the court.
“The practical matter of this case is, the Secretary wants to get the ACIP back to work, and we’re being told that if he reconstitutes any committee, it’s gonna be right back in court,” Zorn said.
In an exclusive interview with The Defender shortly after Murphy suspended ACIP, Retsef Levi, Ph.D., one of Kennedy’s new appointees to ACIP and head of the committee’s COVID-19 workgroup, called Murphy’s ruling “unfortunate” and “highly politicized.”
“I’m puzzled by the fact that the judge felt that he could evaluate the qualifications of these ACIP members to serve on ACIP,” Levi said. “I don’t understand how the judge thought that he has the qualifications by himself to assess that.”
Levi said ACIP’s members did their best to “follow the science” and foster a culture of debate on vaccine safety — despite constant “hostility and adversity” from medical organizations.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) appealed Murphy’s ruling on the preliminary injunction, and sought an emergency stay of Murphy’s order.
CHD also sought to intervene in the AAP’s lawsuit, arguing that neither side has addressed the safety of the CDC’s recommended schedule. Motions by the AAP and federal government to dismiss CHD’s attempted intervention are pending.
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Unclear how ACIP will move forward amid ongoing legal challenges
According to a CDC document issued Thursday, the agency is now seeking nominations for:
“Individuals who have the expertise and qualifications necessary to contribute to the accomplishment of the objectives of ACIP. Nominees will be selected to represent a balanced range of scientific, clinical, and public health expertise relevant to the Committee’s mission, including person(s) knowledgeable about consumer perspectives and/or social and community aspects of immunization programs.”
It is unclear how the agency will create a new committee while the AAP lawsuit and preliminary injunction remain unresolved. HHS did not respond to questions by press time.
Richard Hughes IV, former Moderna vice president and the attorney representing the AAP in the lawsuit against HHS, on Thursday reportedly wrote in an analysis that the new call for nominations “reads as a sign that Kennedy intends to appoint a committee ready and willing to continue where his previous ACIP was forced, by court order, to stop in March 2026.”
In April — a month after Murphy froze the committee and its recommendations — federal health officials updated the governing rules for ACIP, expanding membership criteria, sharpening the focus on vaccine injuries and opening the door to more dissenting voices.
Under its former charter, ACIP required members to “have expertise in the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine, have expertise with clinical or laboratory vaccine research, or have expertise in assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety.”
The renewed version, effective through April 1, 2028, states that ACIP must reflect a “balance of specialty areas,” including “biostatistics, toxicology, immunology, epidemiology, pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine, nursing, consumer issues, state and local health department perspective, academic perspective, public health perspective, etc.,” according to the Federal Register.
Attorney Rick Jaffe, who represents CHD in its appeal of Murphy’s rulings, told The Defender in a previous interview that the new criteria “broadens the universe of qualified candidates considerably.”
“Adding toxicology and biostatistics to the charter’s expertise criteria is a step toward the kind of committee that should have existed all along,” Jaffe said. “For too long, ACIP has been a captured committee for a narrow band of scientists who think only in terms of adding more and more vaccines without regard to the cumulative effect on children.”
Related articles in The Defender
- RFK Jr. Hit With Lawsuit Over Changes to COVID Vaccine Policies for Kids, Pregnant Women
- Breaking: Federal Court Blocks ACIP Meeting, Changes to Childhood Vaccine Schedule
- Exclusive: ‘Unqualified’ Judge to Blame for ‘Highly Politicized’ Ruling Against RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Advisers
- RFK Jr. Overhauls ACIP Rules to Focus More on Vaccine Injuries
- Federal Government Appeals Ruling in AAP Lawsuit that Struck Down RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Policies
- Lawyer Leading Lawsuit Against RFK Jr. Over COVID Vaccines Used to Work for Moderna
- Lawyers for RFK Jr. Ask Court to Allow CDC Vaccine Advisers to Get ‘Back to Work’
