Lawyer Rick Jaffe is doing what the government won’t do; challenge an insane court ruling on vaccine policy
On April 4, Rick filed an appeal1 in the case I’ve been covering—federal judge Brian Murphy has frozen all vaccine decisions at the CDC. His injunction means NO changes to the childhood schedule are possible.
Where is Kennedy’s response in the form of an appeal? As of this writing (4/4/2026), nowhere. That is astounding.
Rick is essentially stepping in to do what the government has been unwilling to do.
Ever since I’ve been aware of his work, I’ve known he doesn’t take NO and walk away from a case. He doesn’t like NO.
Basically, Jaffe wants the court to reverse its freezing of CDC vaccine policy.
To summarize, Judge Murphy has decided, wrongly, that the CDC vaccine advisory committee must originate any changes to vaccine policy before changes are made. Then he said the vaccine committee, as currently composed, couldn’t meet. The result: CDC vaccine policy becomes a frozen statue in the park.
But Rick states, rightly, that no government advisory committee has the power to originate and rule on policy. They just ADVISE. The head of the federal agency makes the decisions. That’s the way things actually work in the real world.
If Judge Murphy’s order stands, Rick points out that the actions of EVERY federal agency could be canceled by a judge who claims the agency’s advisory committee doesn’t have “the right people” on it, and therefore the agency itself is paralyzed. Which is insane.
We’ll see what happens to Rick’s appeal. It could wind up at the Supreme Court.
As a side note, Rick’s appeal includes a 903 page appendix. In pure administrative terms, that’s how far he’s willing to go, to do what the federal government is not doing.
As I mentioned in a previous article, there’s a strong possibility that Kennedy hasn’t appealed Judge Murphy’s ruling because he’s been told not to, by White House aides: