Inside RFK Jr.’s nonprofit’s legal battles over vaccines and public health

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’s been on leave since announcing plans to run for president. “I feel like I’ve come home today to this organization,” he told the cheering crowd.

In a winding, nearly hour-long speech, Kennedy recounted his path to anti-vaccine advocacy and his vision for the government, including calling for a “break” in infectious disease research.

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

But just over a year since giving that speech to the CHD faithful, Kennedy is poised to make good on some of his vision, as Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

The elevation of its chairman and most visible spokesperson has also put a spotlight on Children’s Health Defense, whose profile has surged alongside Kennedy’s. The nonprofit has filed nearly 30 federal and state lawsuits since 2020, many challenging vaccines and public health mandates. Kennedy is listed as a lawyer on some of the cases. A handful of CHD lawsuits target the federal agencies he would oversee at HHS.

“Before the pandemic, anti-vaccine groups brought cases or supported cases, but not to this extent. So this is a new thing,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California San Francisco who studies vaccine law.

Funding videos and lawsuits

Kennedy joined Children’s Health Defense in 2015 when it was called the World Mercury Project. It changed its name three years later, and has emerged as a leading force on the anti-vaccination movement.

Today, CHD is a prolific content creator and a leading source of false and misleading claims about vaccines — including the long-debunked false claim that vaccines cause autism. It operates a daily newsletter, a streaming video channel, and a movie division. In 2020, it helped finance a sequel to the viral “Plandemic” video, which baselessly alleged the COVID-19 pandemic was planned as part of a global conspiracy. The next year it put out a film targeting disproven claims about vaccines at Black Americans.

Legal advocacy is also a significant focus of CHD’s work. In 2019, the group unsuccessfully sued New York over the state’s school vaccine requirements amid a measles outbreak. During the COVID pandemic its legal work ballooned, CHD president Mary Holland said in an interview with NPR.

“During the COVID era, there were so many threats to health and to liberty and to children in particular, that litigation was central,” Holland said.

“They have always sort of put forward that message of freedom, medical freedom, freedom to do what you want, which unfortunately in this case meant freedom to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a longtime critic of the anti-vaccine movement.

CHD filed lawsuits challenging vaccine requirements for New York City healthcare workers and students at Rutgers University. It tried to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization of Covid vaccines for kids.

It lost many of those cases: courts found Rutgers didn’t violate its students’ rights by requiring vaccines, while the FDA case was dismissed for lack of standing.

But Reiss says litigation has helped CHD get more attention, even when courts reject its arguments.

“They use the fact that they’re using legal tools to give legitimacy to anti-vaccine claims,” she said.

Holland says CHD has made an impact despite its legal setbacks. For example, while its lawsuits against vaccine mandates failed, she claims credit for the fact public schools don’t require Covid vaccines — even as the CDC recommends them for everyone six months and older.

“I think our advocacy, together with our reporting, together with our litigation, played a role in that. Many other groups did as well. But that has been very significant,” Holland said.

‘Look at how far we’ve come’

For many Americans, the pandemic was a moment of vulnerability. Reiss says that as vaccination and public health measures became politicized, CHD seized the opportunity to push anti-vaccine messages.

“These groups have a ready made set of claims. Once their claims have become mainstream and people start looking, they appear more credible to people who wouldn’t have given them the time of day before,” Reiss said.

CHD’s litigation strategy has helped bring in donations, according to NBC News, which reported the group received two $100,000 gifts last year specifically to fund its FDA lawsuit and another defending a doctor suspended by Maine’s medical board.

The nonprofit’s revenue more than doubled in 2020 and 2021, and hit $23.5 million in 2022, according to tax filings. However, NBC reported that CHD’s revenue dropped 30% and the nonprofit recorded a $3 million loss last year when Kennedy stepped away to run for president.

Holland declined to comment on CHD’s finances.

While many of its pandemic-era suits ended in defeat, others continue. CHD is suing the Biden administration for censorship, arguing the federal government pressured social media platforms to remove CHD’s posts about COVID vaccines and mandates.

CHD is also defending doctors under investigation by state medical boards for promoting false information about Covid. The Supreme Court recently rejected CHD’s request that it intervene in one such case in Washington state.

Holland said she expects CHD will continue to litigate over medical exemptions to vaccines, among other issues. She said CHD and organizations that share its skepticism of COVID-era public health responses have gained ground in the past four years, empowered by platforms such as the newsletter app Substack and Rumble, a YouTube alternative with a predominantly right-wing audience, that have taken a hands-off approach to content moderation.

“I do think that should there be another declared pandemic, be it mpox or bird flu, that there would be considerably more pushback and there’d be considerably more popular support for pushback than there was in 2020,” she said.

Offit said he is seeing evidence that confidence in vaccines is eroding among some Americans, pointing to falling vaccination rates for kindergarteners and rising cases of measles and whooping cough.

“The voices of misinformation and disinformation have gotten louder and better funded and more ubiquitous. So it’s much, much harder to push against that,” Offit said. “And I do think at heart, most people do trust their doctors. Most people do get vaccinated. Most people do trust vaccines. But I think what’s happened is you’re starting to see a fraying at the edges.”

Kennedy is still on leave from CHD, and while his name remains on some of its lawsuits, Holland said he is “not involved on a day-to-day basis.” She declined to comment on whether CHD would change its legal strategy if Kennedy were to be confirmed as HHS secretary.

Last month, on her weekly online broadcast, Holland celebrated Kennedy’s nomination.

“Game on. We are really there,” she told her co-host, Polly Tommey. “And it’s not going to be easy, Polly, but look at how far we’ve come.”