Comments on the recent judge’s ruling relating to HHS and ACIP

First, welcome to my new followers!

Second, since this page has written about recent ACIP meeting proceedings before, I thought I should address the recent ruling blocking the ACIP meeting that should have been held March 18-19. I’m obviously not a lawyer but I understand some of the implications.

This article has a pretty decent summary of the ruling. Essentially:

· The ACIP meeting that was scheduled for March 18-19 is “stayed”

· The ACIP membership as of June 2025 is also “stayed”

· The revised vaccine schedule approved by CDC, based on work done by scientists at HHS and FDA (my earlier commentary about that here)

There have been a bunch of interviews, podcasts, etc. on this topic already. One worth 2 hours of your time is with lawyer Aaron Siri and ACIP members Robert Malone and Retsef Levi – though I’ll summarize a few key points from that here.

Some key points:

1. The judge’s ruling specifically states that the “expertise” of the current ACIP members was not appropriate. First key point about this: the actual charter for ACIP does not only say “expertise”, but it also says “knowledgeable”. Are physicians that give vaccines “knowledgeable”? Yes. Are pharmacists that give vaccines “knowledgeable”? Also yes.

2. Let’s talk more about this comment about “expertise”. If you read the ruling, the quotes about expertise only refer to bios listed on CDC’s website, and nothing more. It is evident that the judge never actually obtained CVs, resumes, or even a ChatGPT search. There are ACIP members calling this defamation, libel, and evidence of bias.

3. By staying the ACIP committee members, there is no committee currently. So if the plaintiffs want additional vaccines added to the schedule, they can’t be.

4. ACIP has the sole authority on approving coverage of vaccines through the Vaccines for Children program. This is a program that covers vaccines for underinsured and uninsured children. So these are children not covered by Medicaid, etc. Two key changes were made by ACIP since June 2025 where this matters. First, a new RSV monoclonal was approved for coverage, with the express intent that the pre-existing monoclonals were limited in availability. Now those aren’t covered at all. Second, an ACIP recommendation in September recommended that the 12 month dose of MMR + varicella be two separate shots vs one combined shot, for safety reasons. That carried over to the Vaccines for Children vote – in other words, underinsured and uninsured children should get the safer vaccine combination and not the one associated with adverse events. That vote is now erased by this judge’s ruling.

5. Does this ruling apply retroactively – can previous ACIP committee compositions also be ruled “unbalanced”?

6. It is still not clear how a district court in Massachusetts, hearing a lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts chapter of AAP (not the full AAP since that is based in Chicago so that lawsuit would have needed to be submitted there), gets to have influence on something with national implications. That is something that would have to come in in an appeal, but the legal process is slow.

7. Finally… the ACIP meeting agenda listed in the federal register. It listed that COVID-19 vaccine injuries were going to be a topic of discussion. This ruling came 2 days before that meeting would have started. That’s not enough time to appeal anything obviously. Moderna happens to be headquartered in Massachusetts. Coincidence?

So what does this all mean? Andrew Nixon, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Media Relations, said “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned.” Todd Blanche, US Deputy Attorney General, tweeted “We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning.” It will be interesting if the specific issues raised in this substack are addressed any earlier than a court appeal.