Supreme Court refuses to revive wrongful death lawsuit against Andrew Cuomo over COVID nursing home policy

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a wrongful death lawsuit against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his administration's directive that forced nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients, a policy linked to thousands of deaths among the state's most vulnerable residents. The denial ends the last legal avenue for families who spent years seeking accountability in federal court.

The high court offered no explanation for turning away the case, the New York Post reported. That silence is standard practice when the justices deny certiorari. But for the families who buried parents and grandparents after Cuomo's March 25, 2020 order sent infected patients back into nursing facilities, the silence carries a different weight entirely.

Daniel Arbeeny of Brooklyn, who led the lawsuit, said his 89-year-old father Norman, a Korean War veteran, died in 2020 after Cuomo's policy exposed nursing home residents to the virus. Arbeeny filed suit against Cuomo and members of his former administration in 2022, joined by other bereaved families. He called Monday's outcome a disappointment but refused to accept it as vindication of Cuomo's record.

Arbeeny told the Post:

"The Supreme Court doesn't erase what was done and the truth of what happened. Nine thousand COVID-positive patients were forced into nursing homes with deadly consequences."

He added a sharper charge against the former governor's team:

"The [Cuomo] administration lied about the deaths. The facts don't change. The death toll is horrific. It didn't have to happen. At some point, the truth will come out."

How the courts shielded Cuomo

The legal path to Monday's dead end ran through two lower courts, both of which found Cuomo protected by qualified immunity, the doctrine that shields government officials from civil liability when their conduct does not violate clearly established law. Eastern District of New York Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall dismissed the case in 2024. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling.

A separate federal case reinforced the pattern. Fox News reported that U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed a class-action lawsuit making similar claims against Cuomo and his administration. Judge Failla ruled the plaintiffs' claims did not meet the federal legal standard, including the high bar of conduct that "shocks the public conscience," and dismissed most claims on jurisdictional grounds.

Judge Failla wrote plainly about the limits of her role: "The Court's sympathy for Plaintiffs and their loved ones simply cannot supplant governing law." She added: "But the law, as it currently stands, does not permit recovery against the Defendants for the harms alleged."

Note what the courts did not say. They did not find that Cuomo's directive was wise. They did not rule that no harm occurred. They found that the legal standards for holding a sitting governor personally liable in federal court were not met. That is a narrow procedural conclusion, not an exoneration of the policy itself.

The Washington Examiner noted that the ruling did not clear Cuomo's administration of blame for the deaths or the broader allegations of underreporting the toll. Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi responded to that earlier dismissal by declaring that "justice has prevailed."

The policy and its toll

The facts at the center of every lawsuit remain undisputed in their broadest outline. On March 25, 2020, the Cuomo administration issued guidance directing nursing homes to accept patients who had tested positive for COVID-19. Cuomo's team argued the move was needed to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and to keep emergency facilities open for the seriously ill.

Some 15,000 seniors ultimately died from COVID-19 in New York's nursing homes. A congressional report alleged that Cuomo was involved with lowballing the nursing home death count, a charge that dogged him throughout 2021 and beyond. The misuse and mismanagement of COVID-era policy has become a recurring theme among Democratic officials, though few cases carry the human cost of Cuomo's nursing home directive.

Azzopardi, Cuomo's spokesman, pushed back on the Arbeeny family's specific claims. He told the Post that Norman Arbeeny was discharged from his nursing home in April 2020, about three weeks before that facility took in a COVID-positive patient. If accurate, the timeline complicates the direct causation argument in that particular case, though it does not address the broader policy's consequences for thousands of other families.

Azzopardi framed Monday's Supreme Court denial as final vindication:

"Every investigation and every court to examine these claims has reached the same conclusion: there was no wrongdoing by Governor Cuomo or his administration. Today, the Supreme Court joins that list."

That characterization deserves scrutiny. The courts ruled on legal standards and immunity doctrines, not on whether the policy was sound or whether the death count was honestly reported. Saying "no wrongdoing" because qualified immunity applied is like saying a driver wasn't speeding because no officer pulled him over.

Cuomo's post-scandal trajectory

The nursing home controversy was only one of the scandals that ended Cuomo's governorship. A 2021 report from the New York Attorney General alleged that Cuomo, now 68, sexually harassed almost a dozen women during his time in office. He resigned before his term concluded.

Rather than retreat from public life, Cuomo mounted a political comeback bid last year, seeking to become mayor of New York City. He lost both the Democratic primary and the general election to Zohran Mamdani. The familiar Democratic playbook of reinvention after scandal did not work for Cuomo at the ballot box, even if it has worked for him in the courts.

Monday's Supreme Court decision means Daniel Arbeeny and the families who joined his lawsuit have exhausted their federal options to appeal. The legal system, from the Eastern District of New York to the nation's highest court, has effectively told them: we understand your loss, but we cannot help you.

The accountability gap

What remains is a gap between legal outcome and moral reckoning that no court order can close. Fifteen thousand seniors died. The state directed infected patients into their facilities. A congressional report found evidence the administration manipulated the numbers. And every court that examined the claims said the law, as written, does not provide a remedy.

The Supreme Court's role in politically charged cases continues to draw intense attention from both parties. In this instance, the justices chose not to act at all, no hearing, no opinion, no dissent noted in the Post's reporting. For Cuomo, that silence is convenient. For the families, it is one more closed door.

Azzopardi told the Post that "for six long years, families have had to deal with unimaginable losses of loved ones from COVID and it doesn't get easier, especially when that pain was manipulated and politicized." The statement reads as an accusation against Cuomo's critics. But the families might reasonably ask: who manipulated the pain first, the people demanding answers, or the administration a congressional report accused of hiding the real death toll?

The legal system has spoken. Qualified immunity, jurisdictional limits, and the high bar for federal civil liability have combined to insulate Cuomo from courtroom consequences. Whether that outcome reflects justice or merely reflects the limits of the law is a question the courts have declined to answer.

Cuomo's entanglements with New York's political and legal system may be far from over in the public mind, even as the federal docket clears his name. The families who lost parents and grandparents in those nursing homes will carry the cost of his directive long after the last brief is filed.

Courts can dismiss a case. They cannot dismiss 15,000 deaths.