Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has approved a new regulatory framework that could effectively neutralize a federal judge's freeze on the CDC's vaccine advisory panel, according to legal experts reviewing the guidance.
The rules, finalized this week, create an alternative pathway for vaccine policy decisions that bypasses the blocked advisory committee, or ACIP, which a court has temporarily prohibited from operating. The mechanism allows the department to advance vaccination recommendations and policy through different institutional channels.
Legal scholars say the maneuver highlights a potential gap in how the court order was structured. While the injunction halts the ACIP specifically, it does not explicitly prevent other departmental mechanisms from accomplishing similar ends.
"The new rules may allow the substance of what the ACIP would have done to proceed under a different name," said one expert familiar with the matter. "That was likely an unintended consequence of how the order was written."
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic whose appointment sparked immediate controversy among public health officials, has signaled he intends to reshape federal vaccine policy. His agency's move suggests a strategy to preserve that agenda even as litigation unfolds.
The court order freezing ACIP emerged from a lawsuit challenging the panel's composition and procedures. The judge determined there were sufficient questions about the advisory process to warrant a temporary halt while the case proceeds.
Legal observers now expect the freeze's opponents to seek clarification from the judge about whether the new rules constitute an end-run around the injunction. A motion to that effect could force the court to define more precisely what activities are actually prohibited.
The administration did not respond to requests for comment on whether the new rules were designed with the litigation in mind.
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