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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s camp responded defiantly Tuesday after the Supreme Court declined to hear a wrongful death case brought on appeal by a Brooklyn man who blamed the Democrat’s COVID-era nursing home orders for his father’s 2020 death.
Cuomo was one of several Democratic COVID-era governors, including Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf and California’s Gavin Newsom, who came under intense scrutiny for their lockdown procedures and policies that required nursing homes to accept returning hospital patients regardless of their coronavirus infection status.
A Cuomo spokesman told Fox News Digital that the high court was the latest to absolve the former governor of alleged wrongdoing, while the plaintiff told New York media he was “disappointed” by the decision.
“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,” said Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s longtime ombudsman.
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“Every investigation and every court to examine these claims has reached the same conclusion: there was no wrongdoing by Governor Cuomo or his administration,” Azzopardi said.
“Today, the Supreme Court joins that list.”
The plaintiff, Daniel Arbeeny of Brooklyn, sued Cuomo and his then-health commissioner Howard Zucker under federal law covering deprivation of rights and a state wrongful death statute, according to court documents from the Manhattan-based Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
A district court previously dismissed the suit on qualified immunity grounds, which generally state that public officials cannot be prosecuted for actions taken in their official capacity. Police have similar protections.
Arbeeny’s father Norman died at 89 after being released from a Cobble Hill nursing home where COVID patients were housed.
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When Cuomo was running for mayor in 2025, a bipartisan group, including Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, current Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Brooklyn State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, made the issue a focal point and protested together to demand accountability from the New York political scion.
“You need to face us and apologize. If you are going to lead you are going to lead for all of us,” Norman’s other son Peter Arbeeny told Brooklyn Paper.
Cuomo’s policy, like that of other Democratic governors, aimed to assuage fears that COVID-related hospitalizations would overwhelm capacity and led to a ban on nursing homes denying admission solely based on a COVID diagnosis.
“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,” Daniel Arbeeny added Tuesday to the New York Post, a corporate cousin of Fox News Digital.
In remarks to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, Azzopardi said that independent reviews, including those from the DOJ, the New York County district attorney’s office, and the New York State attorney general’s office, found Cuomo’s nursing home guidance consistent with federal policy at the time.
“[It] aligned with actions taken on Democratic and Republican states across the country during a once-in-a-century pandemic,” Azzopardi said. “The facts are settled and the highest court has spoken.”
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He also cited a New York State Department of Health report cited in a legal memo that stated the Cobble Hill nursing home the elder Arbeeny was a patient at had its first COVID-positive-testing patient admitted days after the man was discharged.
While the case was being litigated, Cuomo said via a court filing that the purposes of his mandates were clearly aimed at freeing up hospital beds for “patients with more acute needs” and meant to send “individuals… who were no longer contagious back to facilities who could provide them with adequate care.”
In a Fox & Friends interview after the New York County District Attorney’s office closed its 2022 probe into the nursing home deaths, New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim, D-Flushing, said Cuomo’s lawyers and “PR team” want the public to believe he had been “absolved.”
Fox News chief meteorologist Janice Dean, whose in-laws died in a nursing home, said that news suggested a political “deal” between Albany and top prosecutors.
New York Department of Health records obtained by Fox News showed Cuomo reported 8,505 deaths through January 2021 with the actual figure topping 12,000.
Daniel Arbeeny told Fox News at the time that Norman’s death was preventable because “the governor decided to lie about it.”
The Supreme Court did not issue a reason for its decision not to hear the case.
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