RFK Jr.‘s Former Anti-Vax Org Launches RICO Suit Against Leading Pediatrics Group

The lawsuit by Children’s Health Defense comes as the American Academy of Pediatrics wages its own legal battle against Kennedy’s HHS.

This piece has been updated from its original email version.

Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The suit alleges that the 67,000-member AAP—the nation’s largest pediatric medical trade group—engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public about the safety of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule while taking donations from vaccine manufacturers for its charitable efforts. The case comes as the AAP and other medical organizations are embroiled in their own federal court lawsuit against Kennedy and HHS over changing vaccine recommendations.

In an amended complaint filed Monday, the AAP alleges that the recent updates to the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule were made “without following the evidentiary-driven, and legally required processes for issuing recommended vaccine schedules in the United States.”

Those changes include the CDC’s decision earlier this month to end its universal recommendations for meningitis, RSV, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and flu vaccines as well as its December move to drop the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation. The latter followed advice from the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which Kennedy reshaped last year, replacing the original 12 members with handpicked medical contrarians and figures known for casting doubt on vaccines.

The AAP is seeking to block the schedule changes, invalidate ACIP on the grounds that its new members were unlawfully appointed, and overturn its previous recommendations. The new lawsuit from CHD frames these efforts as attempts by AAP to derail Kennedy’s “reform” of the childhood immunization schedule.

“When the Department of Health and Human Services has attempted reform, AAP leads the opposition: it sued to restore the childhood COVID-19 vaccine recommendation after the CDC removed it and issued inflated statistics about the effects of the December 2025 ACIP hepatitis B decision,” the complaint reads. “AAP and its enterprise associates’ lawsuit to derail the CDC’s January 5, 2026 announcement bringing its vaccine schedule more in line with other industrialized countries (and U.S. states) is the latest evidence of its racketeering activities.”

According to CHD, which has been identified as a major source of online vaccine misinformation, the cumulative safety of the childhood immunization schedule has never been tested—a common anti-vax talking point that misunderstands how vaccines are tested and approved in the U.S.—and the AAP is to blame.

The group takes specific aim at a 2002 article in AAP’s peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics by renowned vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, evaluating the safety of administering multiple immunizations to children.

The complaint calls the article the “foundational fraud” of the racketeering enterprise on the grounds that it “contained theoretical and modeling extrapolations” and has been widely distributed by the trade association—supposedly to silence dissent and prevent further research.

CHD alleges that the AAP, relying on Offit’s work, has blocked efforts to study the cumulative schedule. Experts have pointed out that denying children vaccines and potentially exposing them to dangerous pathogens is unethical, but the suit argues there are other research models available.

Kennedy’s HHS recently tried to fund a study of hepatitis B vaccines in African infants that was ultimately suspended by Guinea-Bissau amid outcry from scientists over the ethics of the research.

The CHD lawsuit claims that “independent researchers worldwide have conducted…comparative analyses, consistently finding superior health outcomes in unvaccinated children.” As proof, it cites papers by former cardiologist Peter McCullough, researcher Anthony Mawson, and CHD chief scientific officer Brian Hooker. Each has authored vaccine-related research that was later retracted, according to Retraction Watch.

The lawsuit also repeats the long-discredited, fraudulent narrative that vaccines cause autism and cites as evidence the CDC’s vaccine information page, which was updated in November on Kennedy’s watch. That page, which now endorses the debunked claim, relies on a paper by one of CHD’s co-plaintiffs: Dr. Paul Thomas, whose positions on vaccines lost him his medical licenses.

The CHD lawsuit ultimately alleges that AAP works to protect the profits of major pharmaceutical companies that have donated to its charitable work. In a statement, CHD president Mary Holland called the trade association “a front operation in a racketeering scheme involving Big Pharma, Big Medicine and Big Media, ready at every turn to put profits above children’s health” and said “It’s time to face facts and see what the AAP is really about.”

Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law San Francisco and leading expert in vaccine law, told Important Context that CHD “using RICO to target AAP’s vaccine policy is a pretty blatant misuse.”

“The lawsuit makes it clear that Children’s Health Defense complaint is that they do not agree with AAP’s position on vaccines,” Reiss explained. “But that’s not racketeering activity.”

Reiss said that the plaintiffs’ injury claims bore a “very weak connection to anything AAP does,” highlighting the cases of Dr. Thomas and Dr. Kenneth Stoller, a California physician who lost his license for writing unnecessary vaccine exemptions. She noted that the issue the doctors faced in their disciplinary actions was not AAP but rather “the schedule recommended at the time by ACIP.”

Kennedy resigned from CHD in December 2024, anticipating his HHS role. During his Senate confirmation hearings, the longtime anti-vaccine activist shared a tense exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who pressed him to disavow anti-vax merchandise on the CHD website and to call on the organization to stop selling it. In response, Kennedy claimed he had “no power over that organization, I’m not part of it, I resigned from the board.”

Yet during Kennedy’s tenure as HHS secretary, CHD has come to his aid on several notable occasions. The suit is the latest example, but last year, when measles outbreaks rocked Texas, killing two unvaccinated children, the group began running interference by casting doubt on the causes of death.

In March, after Kennedy came under fire for a CHD-launched anti-vax web page resembling the official CDC vaccine information page, the group removed it following the secretary’s request. Additionally, Important Context reported, the group hosted Cheryl Hines as a guest of honor at its annual conference’s Champion Dinner this November.

CHD did not respond to our request for comment.