Cuomo Nursing Home Lawsuit: Why the Courts Dismissed Arbeeny and Ferrari

The Cuomo nursing home lawsuits have all failed in federal court. Families who sued former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo over COVID-19 deaths tied to the state’s March 25, 2020 admissions directive lost at the trial level, lost again at the Second Circuit, and were turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 20, 2026, when it denied certiorari without comment.¹ A separate Department of Justice criminal investigation into whether Cuomo lied to Congress about the nursing home death toll remains open as of mid-2026.

The Directive at the Heart of the Cases

On March 25, 2020, the New York State Department of Health issued an advisory stating that “no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” The advisory also barred nursing homes from requiring COVID-19 testing before accepting a hospital transfer, and treated a patient as appropriate for placement once a hospital physician deemed them “medically stable.”²

The directive stayed in effect until May 10, 2020, when Executive Order No. 202.30 imposed a negative-test requirement before any hospital-to-nursing-home transfer.³ Plaintiffs in the federal cases alleged that more than 9,000 recovering COVID patients were placed into nursing homes under the policy and that roughly 15,000 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 between March 25 and May 10, 2020.⁴

Arbeeny v. Cuomo: The Case the Supreme Court Refused

Daniel Arbeeny, administrator of his father Norman Arbeeny’s estate, filed the lead federal case pro se on April 21, 2022 in the Eastern District of New York. It was later consolidated as Daniel Arbeeny, et al. v. Andrew Cuomo, et al., No. 22-cv-02336, before Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall.⁵ The plaintiffs sued under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, arguing that the March 25 directive deprived nursing home residents of their rights to life and bodily integrity, and they added claims under the federal Nursing Home Reform Act.⁶

The complaint named Cuomo, former secretary Melissa DeRosa, and former health commissioner Howard Zucker, along with the Greater New York Hospital Association and Northwell Health. Plaintiffs argued GNYHA was “almost certainly the genesis” of the directive, citing 288 meetings or calls between the Governor’s office and hospital groups between February and April 2020, and a $1 million GNYHA donation to a Cuomo campaign arm during his 2018 primary.⁵

Judge DeArcy Hall granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss on January 10, 2025. The Second Circuit affirmed on November 4, 2025.⁵ Arbeeny petitioned the Supreme Court, which denied review on April 20, 2026, ending the federal litigation. A spokesman for Cuomo said the death toll attributed to the policy had been “manipulated and politicized.”⁷

Ferrari v. Cuomo: The Parallel Class Action

A second federal suit, Ferrari et al. v. Cuomo et al., No. 1:23-cv-07715, was filed in the Southern District of New York as a proposed class action by eight named plaintiffs, including Patricia Biondi and Stacie Druckman. It named Cuomo, DeRosa, and Zucker, and alleged Fourteenth Amendment violations of residents’ “fundamental rights to life, bodily integrity, and the right to personal security.”⁸

Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the case on March 31, 2025 in a 44-page opinion. She found the state had neither “created” the virus nor “imprisoned” residents, and wrote that sympathy for the victims “simply cannot supplant governing law.” She expressed her “deepest sympathy” for the plaintiffs but ruled the claims were “not legally viable.”⁸⁹

Why the Courts Dismissed the Claims

The Second Circuit’s affirmance in Arbeeny rested on qualified immunity. The court found that no reasonable state official at the start of the pandemic would have known the transfer directive violated patients’ constitutional rights, and it called the policy a “legitimate exercise of government power” under the “unique circumstances” of the crisis. The court also rejected the Nursing Home Reform Act claims, holding that it “was and is not clearly established that government officials have a legal duty to protect the rights set forth” in that statute.⁶

The court also disposed of the claims against the private hospital defendants. It held that “a private party does not act under color of law when it asks public officials to intervene for its benefits at the expense of someone else,” which meant GNYHA and Northwell could not be sued as state actors under Section 1983.⁵

Judge Failla’s reasoning in Ferrari ran on a parallel track. Constitutional due process claims generally require either state creation of the danger or state custody over the victim, and she found neither. The state had not created the virus, and nursing home residents were not in state custody in the way the doctrine requires.⁸

Lawsuits Against Nursing Homes Themselves Are a Separate Track

The federal cases against Cuomo are not the same thing as suits families have filed against nursing home operators. Hundreds of negligence and wrongful death cases have moved through state court against individual facilities: more than 750 in New York counties, and over 1,100 COVID-related suits nationwide between March 2020 and March 2024.¹⁰

Those cases run into a different obstacle: New York’s Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act, enacted in the March 2020 state budget, which gave health care facilities broad immunity from COVID-related liability except for gross negligence.¹¹ Cuomo signed a repeal on April 6, 2021 after the Assembly voted 149-1 and the Senate voted unanimously.¹² New York appeals courts have held the repeal is not retroactive, so the immunity still shields conduct during the period it was in force. Many cases have been dismissed on that basis, and the retroactivity question continues to be litigated.¹⁰

The Criminal Investigation That Is Still Open

While the civil lawsuits are over, a federal criminal investigation is not. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed more than 500,000 documents, conducted 10 transcribed interviews, and interviewed Cuomo on June 11, 2024 before he testified publicly on September 10, 2024.¹³ The subcommittee found that the Cuomo administration made a “deliberate decision” to exclude out-of-facility deaths from its public accounting, and that a July 2020 Department of Health report defending the directive had been drafted and edited by the Executive Chamber rather than produced independently by health officials.¹⁴

On October 30, 2024, the subcommittee made an initial criminal referral. On April 21, 2025, House Oversight Chairman James Comer resent the referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi, recommending prosecution for false statements to Congress. The referral alleged that Cuomo falsely testified in his June 2024 interview that he had not been involved in reviewing or drafting the July 6, 2020 Department of Health report, and it pointed to emails and Cuomo’s own handwritten edits on draft pages.¹⁵¹⁶

In May 2025, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, led by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, had opened a criminal investigation into Cuomo about a month earlier.¹⁷¹⁸ The investigation centers on whether Cuomo lied to Congress about his role in the July 2020 report, which allegedly undercounted nursing home deaths by 46 percent.¹⁹ Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said the former governor was never informed of the investigation, called it “lawfare and election interference,” and said Cuomo testified “truthfully to the best of his recollection.” The investigation’s status has not been publicly updated as of mid-2026.

1
Supreme Court of the United States. Docket 25-933, Arbeeny v. Cuomo
2
Skilled Nursing News. DOH COVID-19 NH Admissions Readmissions
3
Empire Center. Documents Showed Evidence of Harm From Nursing Home Order
4
Fox40. Cuomo Defends COVID-19 Nursing Home Decisions in Combative House Committee Hearing
5
Supreme Court of the United States. Arbeeny v. Cuomo, Petition for Writ of Certiorari
6
Bloomberg Law. Cuomo Escapes Liability Claims for COVID-19 Nursing Home Policy
7
New York Law Journal. Supreme Court Denies Cert in Class Action Targeting Former NY Governor’s Nursing Home Policy
8
New York Post. COVID Nursing Home Kin Fume After Lawsuit Against Cuomo Tossed
9
The Center Square. Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Over COVID-Era Nursing Home Policy in NY
10
ABC News. Nursing Homes Wield Pandemic Immunity Laws to Duck Wrongful Death Suits
11
ABC News. Cuomo Repeals Nursing Home Hospital COVID-19 Liability
12
New York State Council. Cuomo Signs Bill Repealing COVID-19 Liability Protections for Health Care Providers
13
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Chairman Wenstrup Opens Hearing With Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
14
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Hearing Wrap Up: Andrew Cuomo Held Publicly Accountable for Nursing Home Disaster
15
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Comer Refers Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Trump DOJ for Criminal Prosecution
16
New York Post. House Republicans Ask DOJ to Charge Andrew Cuomo for Lying About Calculated Cover-Up of NY Nursing Home Deaths
17
The Daily Record. Cuomo COVID Nursing Home DOJ Investigation
18
The Guardian. Justice Department Inquiry Into Andrew Cuomo COVID-19 Response
19
New York Post. DOJ Opens Investigation Into Andrew Cuomo Over NY Nursing Home Deaths Testimony