The AAP’s Lawsuit Against RFK, Jr: Much Ado about Nothing

AAP Sues Secretary Kennedy

On Monday, July 7, a coalition of medical groups led by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts district court against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Included as co-defendants are Marty Makary, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Matthew Buzzelli, Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The FDA, NIH, and CDC are subagencies of HHS, which encompasses all the so-called “public health” agencies.

Joining the AAP in its suit against HHS are the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Another plaintiff is “Jane Doe”, an anonymous physician who is pregnant and already vaccinated, but who was advised by her doctors to get a “another dose” of the vaccine. The doctors’ advice was ostensibly so she could “better protect herself and her baby from contracting this deadly disease.”

The suit alleges that Kennedy’s directive “creates barriers to access to the vaccine and has left Jane and her husband overwhelmed with stress and uncertainty.”

The lawsuit takes issue with Kennedy’s May 27 announcement on X that the COVID‑19 vaccine “for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedules.”

The AAP’s argument is that Kennedy’s announcement broke the promise he made to Congress during his Senate confirmation to “do nothing as HHS Secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”

According to the lawsuit, “The final agency action that he announced on X on May 27 is documented in a ‘Secretarial Directive’ that bears the Secretary’s signature and is dated May 19, 2025 (the ‘Directive’).”

It also states that “The CDC’s immunization schedules were changed after the May 27 announcement, indisputably making the Directive a final agency action.”

According to the lawsuit,

This Directive has put all AAP 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. This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members’ medical practices.

The argument presented by the AAP et al., however, is extraordinarily puzzling since the CDC’s policy changes did not result in the COVID‑19 vaccines becoming unavailable to children or pregnant women, “healthy” or otherwise.