Why S4894 Must Be Paused Until Transparency, Oversight, and Public Accountability Are Guaranteed
S4894 is a gateway bill designed to give the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) broad new authority to move beyond long-established ACIP (CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) standards. It would allow the Department to independently expand or reinterpret immunization and childhood lead-screening requirements as it simultaneously seeks additional regulatory power under its proposed state health code changes.
The timing of Senator Vitale’s bill is not a coincidence. It lands at the exact moment ACIP is re-evaluating safety and efficacy data and revisiting several of its vaccine recommendations, including shifting many COVID-19 recommendations toward personalized, shared decision-making between patients and physicians.
Rather than allowing these scientific reassessments to guide state policy, S4894 positions NJDOH to justify, maintain, or increase vaccine requirements even when federal recommendations change. This aligns with Senator Vitale’s long history of supporting pharmaceutical-driven policies and fills a critical gap that would give NJDOH the discretion it has been seeking.
On the same day S4894 was introduced, NJDOH issued a public statement encouraging:
- COVID-19 vaccination for everyone six months and older,
- annual flu vaccination for everyone six months and older, and
- RSV vaccination for eligible infants, children, pregnant individuals, and older adults —
even as ACIP continues scaling back or revising some of these recommendations.
Source NJ.gov
This move toward state-level authority is not new. Former New Jersey State Epidemiologist Dr. Eddy Bresnitz has repeatedly advocated for removing reliance on ACIP, particularly after Robert Kennedy, Jr., HHS Secretary sought to address conflicts of interest on the committee and strengthen scientific rigor.
S4894 quietly rewrites medical exemption rules, shifting determination of what is “medically contraindicated” away from the federal ACIP standards and placing full authority in the hands of NJDOH. This gives NJDOH unilateral power to narrow, reinterpret, or eliminate medical exemption pathways without legislative oversight, creating uncertainty around the criteria for these exemptions going forward.
S4894 solely empowers NJDOH to influence or change immunization requirements for children, students, and workers across any NJ agency, indirectly and quietly through rulemaking. These include:
- schools
- colleges
- healthcare facilities
- childcare centers
- state employee policies
- public health programs
- long-term care facilities
- corrections facilities
- hospitals
- any regulatory body that references ACIP now
In addition to expanding NJDOH’s unilateral authority, S4894 removes the federal ACIP standard at the very moment the Department is deepening its alignment with the Northeast Public Health Collaborative (NPHC), a regional multi-state coalition that develops “interjurisdictional” policies on vaccination strategy, surveillance systems, laboratory testing, data-sharing, and emergency response. These regional policies are coordinated behind closed doors, outside New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, and without direct democratic oversight from New Jersey residents or legislators.
By detaching New Jersey from ACIP’s nationally recognized, transparent framework and replacing it with NJDOH-controlled guidance, S4894 creates the conditions under which NJDOH may adopt or harmonize regional immunization or public health standards generated by multi-state bodies that are not accountable to the people of New Jersey. This structural shift opens the door for statewide vaccination requirements or surveillance protocols to be shaped by external regional agreements rather than public hearings, legislative debate, or federal review.
The bottom line:
S4894 shifts New Jersey away from a transparent, nationally recognized standard of vaccination guidance and centralizes authority in the NJDOH, an appointed, unelected agency, without requiring legislative approval, public hearings, or stakeholder participation for future changes.
The bill orders every state agency to delete ACIP from its rules and replace it with NJDOH guidance, giving the Department statewide power to control all immunization standards across schools, colleges, childcare centers, healthcare facilities, public health programs, long-term care, corrections, hospitals, and any regulatory system that currently relies on ACIP — with no legislative vote required.
At the same time, NJDOH is aligning itself with the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, a multi-state body that develops “interjurisdictional” policies on vaccines, surveillance, laboratory testing, and emergency response behind closed doors and outside New Jersey’s public records laws.
By removing ACIP’s national anchor and shifting authority to NJDOH, S4894 creates the conditions under which statewide immunization policies could be shaped by regional agreements made outside both state oversight and democratic accountability.
This is why S4894 is structurally significant:
It does not simply update one statute, it rewrites the foundation of immunization authority across New Jersey.
For parents, students, educators, healthcare workers, and medical providers, this bill creates uncertainty, reduces oversight, and opens the door to rapid, far-reaching policy changes that would impact millions of New Jersey families.
Until these issues are addressed openly and transparently, S4894 must not move forward.