As Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has broad authority to shape federal vaccine policy. In June he All 17 members were fired. They selected members of influential committees on vaccination policy and handpicked their successors. In August he the director was fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials clash over vaccines.
But Kennedy’s authority has its limits.
Like President Kennedy, he made the unilateral decision to scrap the U.S. childhood immunization schedule and replace it with Danish recommendations. reportedly ready Legal experts told CIDRAP News last week that this requires more than a press conference.
Dr. Lawrence Gostin, founding director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill National Institute for Global Health Law, said President Kennedy and the heads of other government agencies must abide by the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) as passed by Congress. The law requires federal officials to follow an open deliberative process when issuing rules and regulations.
“As a matter of law, Secretary Kennedy has the ultimate authority to determine federal policy,” Gostin said. “But he has to follow a reasonable process.”
Efforts to reduce the number of vaccinations
President Kennedy’s announcement was canceled at the last minute. The Health Department’s public information office blamed it on a scheduling conflict, but Politico reported that Kennedy said: Plans for a complete overhaul have been scrapped. The vaccination schedule, which was described to reporters as a “child health announcement”, was released after advisers told them there were legal and political risks.
In an email to the media, HHS indicated that the press conference would be rescheduled, saying, “The announcement of the children’s health status will be postponed until after the new year.”
An HHS spokesperson declined to confirm whether Kennedy plans to revise the vaccination schedule during his news conference. “Unless we hear directly from HHS, this is just speculation,” said spokesman Andrew Nixon.
President Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccination activist, has made no secret of his eagerness to overhaul the vaccination schedule. after president trump issued a memo earlier this month Directs HHS to align vaccination schedule with schedules in Denmark, Kennedy, and other countries Posted in X, “Thank you, Mr. President. we are working on it. ”
But Kennedy needs to tread carefully to avoid having his policy changes rejected by judges, Dorit Rees said. Ph.D., Professor of Law at the University of California School of Law, San Francisco.
Legally, Secretary Kennedy has the ultimate authority to determine federal policy…but he must follow a rational process.
According to the APA, the court held that “unlawful; Suspend agency actionFindings and conclusions found to be arbitrary, capricious, abuse of discretion, or otherwise inconsistent with law. ”
Simply holding a press conference and announcing that the U.S. would recommend Denmark’s vaccination schedule would make the Trump administration “very, very vulnerable to arbitrary and capricious claims,” Reese said. “You can’t do that with short videos.”
Follow established procedures
For 60 years, vaccine recommendations have been developed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which typically votes on national recommendations after considering medical evidence and seeking input from experts and the public. The CDC Director can accept or reject these recommendations.
CDC recommendations are not mandatory. Even if Kennedy were to change the current vaccine recommendations to match Denmark’s, states would not have to comply. While the CDC’s recommendations are very important, Gostin said each state will decide individually on school vaccine requirements.
Reese said courts are likely to discount changes to federal vaccine policy that don’t go through ACIP.
If the administration wants to follow Denmark’s example, it “needs to address the key issues and explain why it is changing from a schedule developed over years of deliberation.”
And Trump’s memo carries little or no legal weight, Reese added.
“The president’s memo is not covered because the president’s will alone is not sufficient to justify a change in position based on Supreme Court jurisprudence,” Reese said. “Authorities also need to justify their decisions on the merits.”
Legal challenges to Trump administration policies
A number of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in recent months allege that the Trump administration and heads of federal agencies violated the APA.
For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical groups filed a lawsuit against Kennedy In July, it alleged that it violated the APA. issued a command Removes coronavirus vaccines from CDC’s immunization schedule for children and pregnant women.
“The concerns and legal issues all come down to whether he followed the process and looked at the evidence,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, JD, MPH, who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University and is representing AAP and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Kennedy.
Numerous medical societies and public health organizations criticized Kennedy ACIP is calling for changes to recent vaccination schedules, including removing the recommendation that all newborns be routinely vaccinated against hepatitis B. Scientists and public health advocates have predicted this decision. will cause many children to suffer And they die needlessly from vaccine-preventable diseases.
“Neither President Kennedy nor ACIP have taken adequate steps to evaluate the full range of evidence that would normally be considered before changing recommendations,” Hughes said. “They are all textbook “arbitrary and capricious” based on the Administrative Procedures Act.”
But that doesn’t mean Kennedy can’t find other ways to change the vaccine schedule, Gostin noted.
“If he follows the deliberative process, the final decision will be his own,” Gostin said.
The APA could be interpreted to mean that President Kennedy would need to work with ACIP to change vaccine recommendations, but “that’s not a high bar for President Kennedy, who has hand-picked the members of ACIP,” Gostin said.
Gostin said justifying changes to vaccine recommendations is easier than changing federal regulations, a process that typically takes months and includes opportunities for suggestions and public comment.
Mr. Gostin said that if Mr. Kennedy proposed legal regulation, it would be an even more complicated process.
