The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Arbeeny v. Cuomo on April 21 2026. The denial closes the federal class action against former Governor Andrew Cuomo over the March 25 2020 nursing home admissions directive that required facilities to admit COVID-positive patients discharged from hospitals.
The denial leaves in place a November 4 2025 Second Circuit ruling that the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. Six years after the directive issued, four years after the lawsuit was filed, the federal track is closed.
What happens next runs through state court.
The Case
The named plaintiff was Daniel Arbeeny of Brooklyn. He filed as the son and representative of the estate of his father, Norman Arbeeny, an 89-year-old Korean War veteran who died in 2020 after being released from a Cobble Hill, Brooklyn nursing home.
The defendants were former Governor Andrew Cuomo, former Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, Northwell Health, and the Greater New York Hospital Association. The plaintiffs pleaded a deprivation-of-rights claim and a New York wrongful death claim.
The case was filed in 2022 in the Eastern District of New York before Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall. The judge dismissed the case on September 30 2024.
The Second Circuit panel of Senior Judge José Cabranes, Judge Michael Park, and Judge Beth Robinson affirmed in a per curiam opinion issued November 4 2025, one week after oral argument.
The Supreme Court denied certiorari on April 21 2026 by Monday order list.
The Holding
The qualified immunity ruling is the operative reason the case ended. The Second Circuit held: “Under the unique circumstances of this case, a reasonable official could have believed that the Directives were a legitimate exercise of government power at the time they were implemented.”
On the federal Nursing Home Reform Act claim, the panel held: “It was and is not clearly established that government officials have a legal duty to protect the rights set forth” in the federal statute.
Qualified immunity protects government officials from suit for actions that did not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights at the time of the conduct. The doctrine is a high bar for plaintiffs in any Section 1983 case against state officials. The bar held here.
The Directive
The advisory at the center of the case was issued by the New York State Department of Health on March 25 2020. The operative language: “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 required that “all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs,” with residents deemed appropriate for return upon a hospital physician’s determination of medical stability.
The directive remained in effect until it was rescinded on May 10 2020.
The Death Toll
On January 28 2021, NY Attorney General Letitia James released a report finding that the State Department of Health had undercounted nursing home COVID deaths by approximately 50 percent.
The sample documented in the AG report was specific. Sixty-two nursing homes had reported 1,914 resident COVID deaths to the AG’s office. The State Department of Health had logged only 1,229 at the same facilities.
The same day the AG report dropped, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker disclosed a revised nursing home death count of 12,743, up from the prior figure of approximately 8,500. The revision added approximately 4,000 nursing home residents who had died after being transferred to hospitals, a category New York had previously excluded from its nursing home count. The Empire Center documented this exclusion as “a practice used by no other state.”
A subsequent disclosure on February 7 2021 added 1,516 deaths from adult care facilities.
Aggregate long-term care COVID deaths in New York exceed 15,000.
What Changed in NY State Law
While the federal case ran through the courts, NY State changed the immunity law that the directive operated under.
The Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act, codified as , was enacted in March 2020. It granted broad civil and criminal immunity to nursing homes and other health care providers for COVID-related care.
Article 30-D was partially narrowed in summer 2020. The full repeal came with S5177, signed by Governor Cuomo, effective April 6 2021.
The repeal opened state court claims against private nursing homes for COVID-related conduct after the repeal date. The Arbeeny case, by contrast, was a federal case against state officials. Different defendants. Different track.
What NY Families Can Still Do
The SCOTUS denial closes the federal class action against the state defendants. It does not close civil claims against private nursing homes. Several frameworks remain open in state court.
Negligence and Wrongful Death
A wrongful death claim under must be filed within two years of the date of death. Negligence claims must be filed within three years under . No Notice of Claim is required against a private nursing home.
Public Health Law § 2801-d
gives nursing home residents and their families a private right of action for violations of resident rights under state or federal law. Available for personal injury and, through the wrongful death statute, for deaths caused by those violations. A $5 million jury verdict against South Shore Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Nassau County was upheld in early 2026 under this framework.
Reporting and Parallel Investigations
The NY Department of Health accepts complaints about nursing home care. The NY AG’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigates facilities where Medicaid fraud is suspected. Regulatory action does not preclude civil litigation.
What the Defense Said
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi released a statement after the cert denial: “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. Every investigation and every court to examine these claims has reached the same conclusion: there was no wrongdoing by Gov. Cuomo or his administration.”
Daniel Arbeeny had said, after the EDNY dismissal in September 2024, “It’s a hard case, but we’re not afraid of it because we have the truth.” On the underlying policy he had said, “Nine thousand COVID-positive patients were forced into nursing homes.”
Both quotes are in the record. Both will continue to define the political conversation around the directive. Neither changes the legal status of the case.
Why It Matters Now
Two structural reasons.
First, the cert denial resolves a four-year federal litigation arc that families across New York were following. The path forward, for any family that still wants to pursue a case, is state court against the facility, not federal court against the state. The arithmetic of statute of limitations means many of those state cases for 2020 deaths are already time-barred.
Second, the broader pattern. NY AG Letitia James has now recovered more than $70 million from nursing home owners and operators between 2023 and 2026 in cases that did not require Section 1983 or qualified immunity analysis. The Public Health Law § 2801-d framework has produced significant private verdicts. The accountability track that survived the federal collapse runs through these state vehicles.
The Arbeeny door is closed. The state court doors are open, narrower than they were, but open.
