The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the nation’s largest professional organization of doctors who treat children, said Wednesday it is suing the Trump administration after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) abruptly terminated nearly $12 million in federal grants to the group.
The organization says seven longstanding grants were cut in retaliation for its outspoken opposition to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s changes to federal vaccine policy, in violation of the AAP’s First Amendment rights.
The HHS says the grants were canceled because the programs no longer align with the agency’s priorities.
“This coordinated attack to strip critical funds from AAP was not the result of a routine reappraisal of whether the terminated awards furthered agency priorities … but was a decision from HHS leadership to punish AAP for its speech that contradicted and criticized HHS’s views on high-profile health policy issues,” the lawsuit alleges.
The AAP said the canceled grants funded initiatives including preventing sudden unexpected infant death, improving early detection of developmental disabilities and birth defects, strengthening pediatric care in rural communities, supporting adolescents facing substance use and mental health challenges, and improving standards of care for newborns.
The AAP is asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to immediately block the funding cuts and order the government to restore the grants while the case proceeds.
The AAP has criticized Kennedy and the HHS for making unilateral changes to vaccine policy it alleges are unscientific and not supported by evidence. Kennedy and HHS officials have responded “with vitriol,” the lawsuit stated.
After the group broke with Kennedy and recommended annual COVID-19 vaccines for all young children, Kennedy blasted the association as beholden to corporate interests.
He called for it to disclose “corporate entanglements … so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”
In July, the AAP and several other major medical organizations sued Kennedy and the HHS for removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the recommended immunization schedules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children and pregnant women.
The lawsuit seeks to have Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory panel disbanded and reconstituted under court supervision.
While the HHS and its advisers have attacked the AAP for its position on vaccines and gender-affirming care, the organization noted the canceled grants largely have nothing to do with those issues.
“The affected AAP programs are collateral damage, cancelled not because they are associated with or promote policies that the current administration opposes on their own terms, but merely because HHS wants to harm AAP for its advocacy,” the lawsuit claims.
The Hill has reached out to the HHS for a response.
