The new schedule ‘will damage public health by decreasing vaccine uptake and increasing rates of vaccine-preventable diseases,’ the plaintiffs said.
California and 14 other states on Feb. 24 sued federal health agencies and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the recently revised childhood vaccine schedule.
Federal officials violated federal law by not consulting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel before downgrading recommendations for six vaccines in January, the plaintiffs said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in northern California.
The updated CDC vaccine schedule “will damage public health by decreasing vaccine uptake and increasing rates of vaccine-preventable diseases, including by creating confusion, spreading misinformation contrary to established scientific evidence, and increasing vaccine hesitancy,” they said.
They also took issue with how the CDC, acting on advice from the panel, previously stopped recommending hepatitis B vaccination at birth to children born to women who tested negative for hepatitis B.
The states are asking the court to enjoin those changes.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, said in a Feb. 25 post on X that “by law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.”
A separate lawsuit, lodged in 2025 by health organizations, also seeks to block the revised schedule as well as Kennedy’s remaking of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who heard from the parties during a hearing in Boston earlier in February, has not yet ruled on the request as he considers whether to allow Children’s Health Defense, an organization previously founded by Kennedy, to intervene in the case in support of the government.
Government lawyers have said in filings in that case that the vaccine schedule was reasonably updated based on recommendations from top health officials, including Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
President Donald Trump ordered a comparison of the U.S. vaccine schedule with those of other countries, and it showed the United States was a global outlier among peer nations in routinely recommending vaccines against hepatitis A and certain other diseases, Hoeg said.
A memorandum signed by then-CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill said the update was needed to increase public trust in vaccines.
