Several major medical organizations are suing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Department of Health and Human Services over actions they call a “public health emergency that demands immediate legal action and correction.”
The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The move follows several recent high-profile anti-vaccine actions by Kennedy, including firing all members of a key vaccine panel of experts and removing a recommendation that children and pregnant women get a Covid shot.
“He’s doing everything he possibly can to undermine vaccine confidence,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, one of the organizations joining the lawsuit. “Quite frankly, we’ve had enough.”
It was Kennedy’s late May post on X negating recommendations that kids and pregnant women should get the Covid shot that served as a final straw prompting legal action, said Richard Hughes, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs.
They are “asking the court to order the secretary to announce on X that those immunization recommendations are now reinstated to the CDC immunization schedules,” Hughes said in a media briefing Monday.
An HHS spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Susan Kressly said that “our immunization system has long been a cornerstone of U.S. public health, but actions by the current administration are jeopardizing its success.”
According to the AAP, at least 183 children have died of Covid since the pandemic began.
“The only acceptable number of dead children from Covid is zero,” Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said during the briefing. IDSA is another plaintiff.
Also involved are the American College of Physicians, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance.
An anonymous pregnant woman who lives in Massachusetts is also listed as a plaintiff. She said she is concerned that she’ll be unable to get a Covid vaccination because of Kennedy’s changes to the recommendations. Pregnancy is a known risk for complications of Covid.
Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, said that adults who come to his practice are “hesitant” about vaccines.
“They are not trusting the system anymore, and this is a direct impact on the health of our patients, because if they don’t get vaccinated, they can get sicker, they can end up hospitalized or even die,” Goldman said during the briefing.
CLARIFICATION (July 8, 2025, 10:24 a.m. ET): This article has been updated to clarify a statement from one of the plaintiff’s lawyers. The plaintiff, an anonymous pregnant woman from Massachusetts, said she feared that she wouldn’t have access to the Covid vaccine because of Kennedy’s changes to the recommendations, not that she was unable to get a vaccine.
