Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. violated the law and imperiled public health when he withdrew some recommendations about coronavirus vaccines, a coalition of medical associations alleged in a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit against Kennedy and other top government health officials seeks to overturn the health secretary’s decision in May to end the government’s long-standing blanket recommendation that children and pregnant women should receive the shots.

The reversal has made it difficult for some pregnant women to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their future children, according to the health groups that filed the lawsuit. Medical professionals rely on — and are sometimes legally bound by — federal vaccine recommendations to decide whom to immunize.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine are among the organizations that joined forces to file the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts......

The lawsuit includes an anonymous pregnant physician and says it will be “more difficult” for her to access the coronavirus vaccine. It asks a judge to set aside Kennedy’s coronavirus vaccine directives and urges the court to order Kennedy to say on X that the vaccine recommendations are restored for pregnant women and children. It also seeks to immediately prevent the government from enforcing the new recommendations.

The lawsuit contends that Kennedy “has demonstrated a clear pattern of hostility toward established scientific processes, a disregard for expert guidance, an affinity for placing persons who align with his anti-vaccination views in positions of authority at HHS, and a reliance on bias and pretext to further his apparent agenda: to undermine trust in vaccines and reduce the rate of vaccinations in this country.”