Public nursing homes won’t face federal COVID probe

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Justice Department has decided not to open a civil rights investigation into governmentrun nursing homes in New York over their COVID19 response, according to a letter sent Friday to several Republican members of Congress.

Under former President Donald Trump’s administration, the department’s civil rights division requested data last August from four states — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan — about the number of COVID19 infections and deaths in public nursing homes.

The request came amid stillunanswered questions about whether some states, especially New York, inadvertently worsened the pandemic death toll by requiring nursing homes to accept residents previously hospitalized for COVID19.

In a letter sent to several Republicans who had demanded an investigation, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joe Gaeta said civil rights division lawyers decided not to open an investigation after reviewing the data sent by New York, along with additional information.

Similar letters were sent to officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has previously accused Trump’s Department of Justice of initiating the inquiry for purely political reasons. He has also defended the decision to bar nursing homes from rejecting COVID19 patients during the worst weeks of the pandemic, saying the state was desperate at the time to move recovering patients out of overwhelmed hospitals.

Friday’s letter doesn’t address the status of other Justice Department inquiries into how the Cuomo administration handled data related to nursing homes outbreaks.