A proposed class-action lawsuit accused the former governor of mishandling COVID-19 patients in nursing homes.
A federal judge on March 31 dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that blamed his administration for COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes across the state.
In her
order, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote that the plaintiffs in the case did not have the federal right to file a lawsuit against the former governor, who is currently running to be the next mayor of New York City, and several others who had served in his administration.
The plaintiffs argued in court papers that their family members had contracted COVID-19 in New York state nursing homes because of a March 2020 order issued by Cuomo that prohibited nursing homes from denying the admission of people into their facilities “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” The move was made to free up hospital bed space at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by sending people from those medical facilities to nursing homes.
“As explained herein, and despite the Court’s deepest sympathy for Plaintiffs and their families, the fact remains that their proffered claims are not legally viable,” Failla wrote in her opinion.
The judge further explained that the complaint lacks “allegations that the nursing homes, as the alleged perpetrators of ‘private violence,’ committed a state-sanctioned violent act that caused decedents harm,” adding that “the amended complaint merely pleads action that ‘increased the likelihood’ that decedents would be unsafe.”
In a statement
posted on social media platform X on March 31, Cuomo’s spokesman Rich Azzopardi hailed the judge’s decision and said that whenever the nursing home issue “gets taken out of the press or the political arena and into the courts, the truth wins.”
Cuomo has faced significant political blowback over the nursing home directive. New York Attorney General Letitia James
released a report in early 2021 stating that more people in nursing homes died from the virus than what the New York State Department of Health had published at the time and that state officials may have undercounted deaths by as much as 50 percent.
Last year, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, led by Republican lawmakers,
recommended that Cuomo face criminal charges. They alleged that he lied during House-led investigations into nursing home deaths in the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cuomo said in September 2024 during the House hearing that it was the federal government that allowed people to go from hospitals to nursing homes in March 2020.
He also denied that his administration underreported COVID-19 deaths.
“We said these are the deaths without the ‘out of facility’ death numbers, which we will add when they’re accurate, which will reduce the hospital death number, but the total number of deaths stays the same. It was an allocation question,” Cuomo
said at the time.
Aside from the nursing home allegations, Cuomo faced a handful of allegations from women that he acted in an inappropriate manner toward them.
The former governor resigned from office in August 2021, allowing for current Gov. Kathy Hochul to take over.
An Emerson College
poll released on March 26 showed Cuomo leading in the New York City mayoral race, supported by 38 percent of Democratic voters.
