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U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is requesting an additional two weeks to respond to a lawsuit alleging he violated federal law by not establishing a task force to make vaccines safer.
In a court filing submitted Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Summer Johnson said Kennedy wants more time “to explore the potential for early resolution of this matter before engaging in further litigation.”
The request, accepted by both parties and approved by the judge, pushes the deadline for Kennedy to respond from Aug. 1 to Aug. 15.
The lawsuit, funded by Children’s Health Defense and filed in May, didn’t garner major media attention until The Defender reported on it last week.
The suit alleges Kennedy is violating the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which requires the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to promote the development of safer childhood vaccines that cause “fewer and less serious adverse reactions” than existing ones.
The act requires HHS to establish a task force that includes the health secretary, the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The law also requires the health secretary to provide Congress with progress reports every two years.
Since the U.S. Congress passed the act over 35 years ago, no health secretary — including Kennedy — has reported to Congress on steps taken to make vaccines safer, according to attorney Ray Flores, who filed the complaint.
Flores said in the complaint that because more than 100 days have passed since the Trump administration took office, “any grace period for Mr. Kennedy to rectify the failure of his predecessors has ended.”
In response to Kennedy’s request for more time to resolve the issue, Flores told The Defender that satisfactory settlement terms would include exactly what he seeks in the complaint — for Kennedy to comply with the law by establishing the task force and submitting the required reports to Congress by a reasonable set date.
Fulfilling those duties “would be a major step in restoring confidence in vaccination,” Flores said.
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On Monday, Kennedy announced, in a detailed post on X, that HHS plans to overhaul the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), the federal program created to compensate people who are injured by vaccines.
“The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it. I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals,” he said.
Related articles in The Defender
- Lawsuit Targets HHS for Failing to Set Up Task Force on Childhood Vaccine Safety
- Did MAHA Report Go Far Enough on Vaccines? Fans and Critics Weigh In
- Kids, Vaccines and Autism: Will a New Legal Strategy End the Decades-long Battle for Truth and Justice?
- ‘RFK, Polio Vaccines, the Media and Me’: Lawyer Corrects New York Times Misinformation
