Mass firings at the FDA have decimated divisions tasked with releasing public records generated by the agency’s regulatory activities in sectors including tobacco, food, medical devices, and veterinary medicine.
But as the dust settled on the layoff melee, a notable exception emerged among the agency’s staff charged with responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. The cuts spared at least some workers who furnish documents in response to court orders in FOIA lawsuits involving the FDA division that regulates vaccines, which includes litigation brought by an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s who represents anti-vaccine interests, according to four current or former agency employees.
KFF Health News agreed not to name the workers because they are not authorized to speak to the press and fear retaliation.
Lawyer Aaron Siri filed the FOIA lawsuits, on behalf of the nonprofit Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, in 2021 and 2022 against the FDA to obtain records related to Pfizer’s and Moderna’s covid-19 vaccines. Siri was Kennedy’s lawyer during his 2024 presidential campaign and has represented prominent anti-vaccine activists in numerous lawsuits.
The FDA has released millions of pages of documents about the vaccines after a federal judge in Texas ruled against the agency and set deadlines for furnishing the records. The judge, Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, wrote in January that the nonprofit’s request s …