US vaccination ruling: A federal judge in Boston who has repeatedly stood in the way of major Trump administration policies is again at the centre of a high-profile legal fight, this time over US vaccine policy.
On Monday, March 16, 2026, US District Judge Brian Murphy ruled in favour of several medical organisations that challenged a series of actions taken by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The groups argued that Kennedy and the agencies under him had unlawfully altered federal vaccine policy in ways that could make immunisation harder to access, deepen mistrust in vaccines, and reduce vaccination rates.
Murphy agreed. In his ruling, he blocked the CDC’s move to cut the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations. Also, he ruled against Kennedy’s decision to dismiss and replace members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel. The decision led to the postponement of a meeting that had been scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
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Kennedy, who has long questioned the safety and effectiveness of vaccines despite broad scientific consensus supporting them, was appointed by President Donald Trump last year to lead the nation’s top health agency. Public health experts and medical groups have repeatedly warned that his actions could weaken trust in vaccination and harm long-term public health efforts.
Judge Murphy, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate, joined the federal bench in Massachusetts in December 2024, just before Trump returned to office. Since then, he has become a frequent target of criticism from the administration after issuing rulings that blocked several of its major policy moves.
Among those were decisions affecting immigration enforcement, federal research funding, and offshore wind development. His courtroom has increasingly become a battleground for nationally significant cases, especially as opponents of Trump’s policies have directed litigation to federal courts in Boston, where many judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.
Before becoming a judge, Murphy worked as a public defender and later ran a small criminal defence practice in Worcester, Massachusetts. Speaking at an event in February, he acknowledged that he had not expected to handle so many nationally important cases so early in his time on the bench.
The vaccine case before him was filed by public health groups led by the American Academy of Pediatrics. They asked the court to stop the CDC from implementing a revised childhood vaccination schedule and to prevent a newly assembled vaccine advisory committee from holding its March 18–19 meeting.
According to the challengers, the CDC had unlawfully reduced the number of routine childhood vaccine recommendations to 11 and lowered recommendations for six diseases, including influenza and hepatitis A.
They also objected to Kennedy’s decision to remove all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices and replace them, arguing that the new panel was stacked with vaccine sceptics and did not meet the standards required under federal law for advisory bodies.
That restructured panel later voted to scale back broad federal recommendations for COVID-19 and hepatitis B vaccines.
Lawyers for the Justice Department had argued that the plaintiffs were effectively asking the court to take over federal health policymaking. They also said that legal requirements for a balanced advisory panel referred to members’ professional backgrounds, not their personal views.
Murphy has also drawn attention in another major case involving the Trump administration’s immigration policy. In that case, immigrant rights groups challenged the government’s efforts to quickly deport migrants to countries other than their own without first allowing them to raise fears of persecution or torture.
Murphy issued orders limiting deportations of migrants to countries such as South Sudan, Libya and El Salvador. Trump publicly attacked him over that case, calling him “out of control,” while White House adviser Stephen Miller described him as a “lunatic.”
The Supreme Court stepped in twice during the early phase of that dispute, lifting Murphy’s injunction and allowing several deportations to South Sudan to proceed. Murphy later ruled again against the administration’s “third country” deportation policy on February 25. But on Monday, a federal appeals court paused that order while the administration continues its appeal. The government has indicated it may once again take the matter to the Supreme Court.
Murphy has delivered other setbacks to the administration as well. In October, he ruled that Pentagon cuts to federal university research funding were unlawful. In January, he allowed the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts to resume after the administration had tried to block offshore wind development on national security grounds. He also temporarily stopped the government from ending deportation protections for more than 5,000 Ethiopians living in the U.S.
At Murphy’s formal swearing-in ceremony in September, Democratic Senator Ed Markey remarked that the judge’s early months on the bench had been anything but quiet.
Sometimes, Markey said, the judiciary has its own plans.