Inside RFK Jr.'s nonprofit's authorized battles over vaccines and public well being

In November 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr took the stage at a conference put on by Children’s Heath Defense, the anti-vaccination nonprofit he chairs and from which he is been on depart since saying plans to run for president. “I really feel like I’ve come house at present to this group,” he instructed the cheering crowd.

In a winding, almost hour-long speech, Kennedy recounted his path to anti-vaccine advocacy and his imaginative and prescient for the federal government, together with calling for a “break” in infectious illness analysis.

Kennedy’s presidential bid, launched from the elevated platform he gained by promoting conspiracy theories and unfounded fears about vaccines and public well being measures through the COVID-19 pandemic, fizzled. In August, he suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump.

However simply over a yr since giving that speech to the CHD devoted, Kennedy is poised to make good on a few of his imaginative and prescient, as Trump’s choose to steer the Department of Health and Human Services.

The elevation of its chairman and most seen spokesperson has additionally put a highlight on Youngsters’s Well being Protection, whose profile has surged alongside Kennedy’s. The nonprofit has filed almost 30 federal and state lawsuits since 2020, many difficult vaccines and public well being mandates. Kennedy is listed as a lawyer on a few of the circumstances. A handful of CHD lawsuits goal the federal companies he would oversee at HHS.

“Earlier than the pandemic, anti-vaccine teams introduced circumstances or supported circumstances, however to not this extent. So it is a new factor,” mentioned Dorit Reiss, a professor on the College of California San Francisco who research vaccine regulation.

Funding movies and lawsuits

Kennedy joined Youngsters’s Well being Protection in 2015 when it was known as the World Mercury Undertaking. It modified its title three years later, and has emerged as a number one pressure on the anti-vaccination motion.

Right this moment, CHD is a prolific content material creator and a number one supply of false and deceptive claims about vaccines — together with the long-debunked false declare that vaccines trigger autism. It operates a each day e-newsletter, a streaming video channel, and a film division. In 2020, it helped finance a sequel to the viral “Plandemic” video, which baselessly alleged the COVID-19 pandemic was deliberate as a part of a world conspiracy. The subsequent yr it put out a movie concentrating on disproven claims about vaccines at Black Individuals.

Authorized advocacy can also be a big focus of CHD’s work. In 2019, the group unsuccessfully sued New York over the state’s college vaccine necessities amid a measles outbreak. Through the COVID pandemic its authorized work ballooned, CHD president Mary Holland mentioned in an interview with NPR.

“Through the COVID period, there have been so many threats to well being and to liberty and to youngsters particularly, that litigation was central,” Holland mentioned.

“They’ve all the time form of put ahead that message of freedom, medical freedom, freedom to do what you need, which sadly on this case meant freedom to catch and transmit a probably deadly an infection,” mentioned Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Schooling Heart on the Youngsters’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a longtime critic of the anti-vaccine motion.

A 2022 file photograph of COVID-19 vaccine booster photographs. Youngsters’s Well being Protection helped finance a sequel to ‘Plandemic,’ a conspiratorial movie that baselessly claimed the COVID pandemic was the work of a world conspiracy. CHD’s profile and revenues rose through the COVID pandemic because it challenged public well being mandates.

Scott Olson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America

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Scott Olson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America

CHD filed lawsuits difficult vaccine necessities for New York Metropolis healthcare staff and college students at Rutgers College. It tried to revoke the Meals and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization of Covid vaccines for teenagers.

It misplaced lots of these circumstances: courts found Rutgers did not violate its college students’ rights by requiring vaccines, whereas the FDA case was dismissed for lack of standing.

However Reiss says litigation has helped CHD get extra consideration, even when courts reject its arguments.

“They use the truth that they’re utilizing authorized instruments to offer legitimacy to anti-vaccine claims,” she mentioned.

Holland says CHD has made an affect regardless of its authorized setbacks. For instance, whereas its lawsuits in opposition to vaccine mandates failed, she claims credit score for the actual fact public schools don’t require Covid vaccines — even because the CDC recommends them for everybody six months and older.

“I feel our advocacy, along with our reporting, along with our litigation, performed a task in that. Many different teams did as nicely. However that has been very important,” Holland mentioned.

‘Have a look at how far we have come’

For a lot of Individuals, the pandemic was a second of vulnerability. Reiss says that as vaccination and public well being measures turned politicized, CHD seized the chance to push anti-vaccine messages.

“These teams have a prepared made set of claims. As soon as their claims have turn into mainstream and other people begin wanting, they seem extra credible to individuals who would not have given them the time of day earlier than,” Reiss mentioned.

CHD’s litigation technique has helped usher in donations, in keeping with NBC News, which reported the group obtained two $100,000 items final yr particularly to fund its FDA lawsuit and one other defending a physician suspended by Maine’s medical board.

The nonprofit’s income greater than doubled in 2020 and 2021, and hit $23.5 million in 2022, in keeping with tax filings. Nevertheless, NBC reported that CHD’s income dropped 30% and the nonprofit recorded a $3 million loss final yr when Kennedy stepped away to run for president.

Holland declined to touch upon CHD’s funds.

Whereas lots of its pandemic-era fits led to defeat, others proceed. CHD is suing the Biden administration for censorship, arguing the federal authorities pressured social media platforms to take away CHD’s posts about COVID vaccines and mandates.

CHD can also be defending medical doctors below investigation by state medical boards for selling false details about Covid. The Supreme Court docket just lately rejected CHD’s request that it intervene in a single such case in Washington state.

Holland mentioned she expects CHD will proceed to litigate over medical exemptions to vaccines, amongst different points. She mentioned CHD and organizations that share its skepticism of COVID-era public well being responses have gained floor up to now 4 years, empowered by platforms such because the e-newsletter app Substack and Rumble, a YouTube different with a predominantly right-wing viewers, which have taken a hands-off method to content material moderation.

“I do assume that ought to there be one other declared pandemic, be it mpox or chook flu, that there could be significantly extra pushback and there’d be significantly extra standard help for pushback than there was in 2020,” she mentioned.

Offit mentioned he’s seeing proof that confidence in vaccines is eroding amongst some Individuals, pointing to falling vaccination rates for kindergarteners and rising circumstances of measles and whooping cough.

“The voices of misinformation and disinformation have gotten louder and higher funded and extra ubiquitous. So it is a lot, a lot tougher to push in opposition to that,” Offit mentioned. “And I do assume at coronary heart, most individuals do belief their medical doctors. Most individuals do get vaccinated. Most individuals do belief vaccines. However I feel what’s occurred is you are beginning to see a fraying on the edges.”

Kennedy remains to be on depart from CHD, and whereas his title stays on a few of its lawsuits, Holland mentioned he’s “not concerned on a day-to-day foundation.” She declined to touch upon whether or not CHD would change its authorized technique if Kennedy had been to be confirmed as HHS secretary.

Final month, on her weekly on-line broadcast, Holland celebrated Kennedy’s nomination.

“Sport on. We’re actually there,” she instructed her co-host, Polly Tommey. “And it is not going to be simple, Polly, however take a look at how far we have come.”