Pa. joins 14 other states in filing suit against new federal child vaccine recommendations

Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Feb 25, 2026

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Pennsylvania joined 14 other states in suing the federal government over recent changes to childhood vaccine recommendations.

“I’m going to court to ensure doctors and qualified experts are making vaccine recommendations; not conspiracy theorists,” said Gov. Josh Shapiro in a Wednesday news release. The suit, filed Tuesday by Mr. Shapiro and attorneys general from 14 other Democratic-led states, calls new federal childhood vaccine guidance unlawful and asks that the recommendations be set aside.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services dismissed the lawsuit as baseless in a Wednesday email to the Post-Gazette.

“This is a publicity stunt dressed up as a lawsuit,” said Emily Hillard, press secretary for HHS. “By law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The CDC immunization schedule reforms reflect common-sense public health policy shared by peer, developed countries.”

The change to the childhood vaccine guidance came in early January, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control cut the number of vaccines recommended for all children from 17 to 11. The CDC said that those recommendations put the United States more in line with other high-income countries, aligning most closely with Denmark.

The CDC still recommends that all children be vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus and varicella.

It no longer recommends that all children be vaccinated for respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue meningococcal ACWY and meningococcal B, although it does recommend those vaccines for some high-risk children.

The lawsuit from the 15 states charges that the CDC guidance ignores scientific evidence about the effectiveness of those vaccines and unlawfully circumvents the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which had previously made vaccine recommendations followed by the government. It also charges that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unlawfully fired and replaced the existing members of ACIP.

It asks that the new vaccine guidance recommendations, referred to in the lawsuit as “the Kennedy Schedule,” and appointments of the new ACIP members, referred to as the “Kennedy Appointees,” be declared unlawful and set aside.

The lawsuit also questions the justification for aligning the U.S. vaccine schedule with Denmark, saying that Denmark should not be considered a “peer country” because of its small, homogeneous population and its universal health care system.

“Listen, we believe in science here in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Shapiro said Tuesday night in a video posted on X. “We trust our physicians, and we trust our parents to make the best decisions for their kids and the people that they care for — not RFK.”

This is not the first action taken by Mr. Shapiro in defiance of federal changes to the vaccine system. In October, he signed an executive order creating a new state program to give free vaccines to 1.5 million children in Pennsylvania. The state has also joined with nine other states and New York City’s health department to make its own recommendations on vaccines.