Six leading medical organizations filed a lawsuit Monday against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services, charging that recent decisions limiting access to vaccines were unscientific and harmful to the public.

The suit, filed in federal court in western Massachusetts, seeks to restore COVID-19 vaccines to the list of recommended immunizations for healthy children and pregnant women.

Kennedy has been on a “decades-long mission” to undermine vaccines and to portray them as more dangerous than the illnesses they are designed to prevent, said Richard H. Hughes IV, a lawyer who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University and is leading the effort.

“The secretary’s intentions are clear,” Hughes said: “He aims to destroy vaccines.”

The HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The plaintiffs include the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance.

The groups are joined by a pregnant woman, identified only as Jane Doe, who said she was unable to get a COVID-19 shot.

In May, Kennedy announced in a video posted on the social media platform X that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.

Kennedy’s decision contravenes years of evidence showing that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness, miscarriage and stillbirth if they contract COVID, public health experts said.

“From a scientific perspective, a pregnant woman, by her very nature, is immunocompromised,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Kennedy’s decision “didn’t follow the normal process,” he added.

Normally, scientific advisers to the CDC would debate the research and make recommendations to the agency’s director. Kennedy made the announcement without consulting CDC staff or its independent advisers.

The secretary and his associates have also ignored statements from professional organizations, Benjamin said.

“This is not a group that follows advice, it’s not a group that responds to political pressure, but so far, they respond to legal pressure,” he added.

Although the lawsuit focuses on access to COVID-19 vaccines — the only recommendation for which the plaintiffs believed they were able to demonstrate harm — more vaccine decisions may be added.