Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
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, has said it does not comment on litigation.
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.
A baby after receiving a vaccine for hepatitis B and other diseases, in a file illustration photograph. Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
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.
The government has also said Kennedy’s replacement of vaccine advisory committee members was legal because members hold a variety of jobs and have put forth “complex and nuanced perspectives.”
The attorneys general of 14 states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin—all Democrats, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, also a Democrat, are the plaintiffs in the new suit.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters in an online briefing on Tuesday that the actions Kennedy and other officials have taken regarding the vaccine “harm public health and they strain state resources by sowing doubt and confusion in vaccines and in science.”
He added later that, absent action from the court, “California will be forced to expend resources, to treat once rare diseases, to respond to outbreaks, and to combat misinformation.”
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