After the Supreme Court denied a request to hear a COVID-19 wrongful death case against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, his camp wasted no time proclaiming Cuomo’s innocence, according to Fox News. Cuomo’s spokesperson stated:
"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."
The statement you just read is an outright lie.
The Supreme Court did not examine the claims. The court did not hear the evidence. The court did not make its ruling on the merits of the case. The court did not find that Cuomo had “no wrongdoing.” The court declined to hear the case, effectively kicking the can down the road, once again shielding a lawmaker who does not deserve to be protected.
Cuomo’s policy was linked to the deaths of 15,000, including a veteran, Norman Arbeeny, who survived the Korean War, but failed to survive Cuomo’s nursing home policy. This, in my opinion, was a cowardly act by the court and an outright failure to do its job.
On March 25, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered 9,000 elderly patients who had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus to be sent into nursing homes, reported the Associated Press.
This was a strategic move by Cuomo, who was trying to allay fears that hospitals were being overrun by COVID patients at the time.
Keep in mind, the elderly were, by far, the most susceptible to the virus, yet he decided to send patients who had tested positive into homes packed with elderly patients. The move was an epic failure, as nursing home deaths in New York were among the worst in the nation, with more than 15,000 deaths eventually reported.
Cuomo stood by his directive, yet he rescinded it just six weeks later.
Daniel Arbeeny sued over his father’s death during the pandemic at the Cobble Hill nursing home. The suit was dismissed by the lower court, then again at the appellate level, and now before the Supreme Court.
The basis of the refusal to hear the case was qualified immunity, which protects public officials from being held personally liable for civil damages while performing their duties.
The exception to the rule is if the official violated a "clearly established" statutory or constitutional right that a reasonable person would have known, according to the Cornell School of Law.
The complaint against Cuomo was filed on the basis that he violated the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act. This bill, according to the Nursing Home Abuse Guide, provides residents with the right to:
As we noted above, Cuomo’s decision was not based on anything other than optics. He did not want the state to appear to have overwhelmed hospitals, and by doing so, he put these people at risk (which violates the fourth and fifth points above).
Just as Daniel Arbeeny, Norman’s son, stated:
"Nine thousand COVID-positive patients were forced into nursing homes with deadly consequences.”
Deadly to the tune of 15,469 nursing home deaths both inside and outside the facility, according to Nursing Home 411.
Keep in mind, in real time, Cuomo was juking the numbers to make his stats look better than they were. A BBC report in January 2021 had reported that Cuomo claimed there were 8,711 deaths reported, but the real number exceeded 13,000 (at that time).
Cuomo, according to a New York Times report, was not counting the patients who had been removed from these homes and transferred to hospitals. You don’t have to be a genius to realize he was doing this because he knew if he reported the numbers honestly, he would be among the top five states in the country in terms of nursing home deaths.
It’s an assumption on my part, but it would appear that he was panicking, realizing his policy was failing, so he juked the numbers to calm fears about the initial decision to send positive patients back to these homes. If Cuomo’s policy was defensible, then why rig the numbers? I just cannot get away from that.
When Cuomo was grilled by Congress, he pointed the finger at the Trump administration for a lack of testing and PPE. He also claimed there was no direct evidence that his policy contributed to the spread of the virus.
Cuomo’s defense team claimed that the policies were consistent with federal guidance and that they were "aligned with actions taken on Democratic and Republican states across the country."
The court ultimately refused to hear the case because of qualified immunity, but I believe the definition, in this case, stretched well beyond the legal definition.
The decision to move patients, as I noted above, was one of optics, not based on science. And from that point forward, it was all about the cover-up.
Cuomo rescinded his policy, which is all but an admission that he knew it was a failure. And again, he juked the stats to cover up the total deaths because he knew he had made a mistake.
Cuomo's team is framing this as total exoneration. It is nothing of the sort.
This not only lets Cuomo off the hook, but it also lets every other governor who followed a similar policy off the hook. Nobody is being held accountable for what was clearly a politically motivated decision.
Cuomo, in particular, appears to be made of Teflon. He is not being held accountable for these deaths, and he wasn't just let off the hook; he was so confident in his immunity that he ran for office again and expected to win.
The court was cowardly, refusing to take on a case it knew would be a ticking time bomb politically, but the evidence was clear.
Cuomo issued a directive that resulted in 9,000 COVID-positive patients being sent to nursing homes. The death toll skyrocketed, and six weeks later, he rescinded the order. You don’t rescind an order that is working. You rescind it because it had failed, and in this case, it was killing people. The timeline on all of this is quite clear.
Timeline: From Directive to Denial
The rescission, in my opinion, was equivalent to a signed confession, but the court chose to turn its head and kick the can down the road.
However, there are more than 15,000 families who were not able to avoid addressing the policy mistakes of Cuomo. They were forced to bury their loved ones. While I did not live in New York at the time, my brother-in-law died similarly, and we had to bury him with only a handful of family members due to COVID restrictions in place at the time, so I feel their pain.
The only person not feeling the pain, at this point, is Andrew Cuomo.
