Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics sues Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine changes

Lisa Schencker, Chicago Tribune on Jul 7, 2025

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The Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics and five other prominent medical groups are suing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over changes made to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleges that a decision in May to remove COVID-19 vaccines from the federal list of recommended vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women was unlawful and “endangering the lives of patients.”

“The Directive has put all (American Academy of Pediatrics) members (and, indeed, all other physicians in this country) in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country’s top-ranking government health official’s advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right,” according to the lawsuit. “This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members’ medical practices.”

Now, instead of recommending the vaccine for healthy children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says healthy children may receive the vaccine after “a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.”

The medical groups want the court to bar the federal government from enforcing and publicizing the new recommendations, and they want the court to declare the change unlawful and restore the previous recommendations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. But in a video posted to X in May announcing the change, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said of the change, “It’s common sense, and it’s good science.”

In that same video, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said, “There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.”

Bhattacharya, Makary, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the head of the CDC are also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Other plaintiffs in the case include the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and an unnamed pregnant doctor.

The medical groups allege in the lawsuit that the change was against the law partly because Kennedy bypassed the usual process for making changes to the list of recommended vaccines. Normally, a committee called the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations to the CDC about vaccines. Kennedy has also faced criticism in recent weeks for firing all the members of ACIP and replacing them with others.

“This wasn’t just sidelining science,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics, in a video posted to the group’s website. “It’s an attack on the very foundation of how we protect families and children’s health. And the consequences could be dangerous.”

Since the change to the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, pediatricians have had to spend more time talking with distressed parents about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit describes one pediatrician’s struggle, saying: “The CDC’s current emphasis on ‘shared decision-making’ for the Covid vaccine for children has put a chilling effect on her practice. Shared decision-making implies that the Covid vaccine is optional or suspect, making it harder to hold Covid vaccine clinics, limiting her practice’s ability to order vaccines in bulk, and creating reimbursement challenges.”

Because of the “confusion and lack of evidence-based data” supporting the changes, the American Academy of Pediatrics has chosen not to endorse the CDC’s current child and adolescent vaccination schedule and is instead endorsing the schedule as it stood before the changes, according to the lawsuit.

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