The Department of Justice revealed Friday that it will not open a formal civil rights investigation into New York State's handling of COVID in nursing homes. Announcing the decision in a letter to Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, DOJ officials say that after gathering data, there isn't enough evidence to initiate a formal inquiry.

Scalise and other House Republicans had requested the inquiry from the Trump Justice Department last year. They focused not just on New York, but on other states as well, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. All of those are states with Democratic governors that saw high rates of deaths in publicly regulated nursing homes. 

Gov. Cuomo’s office did not have a comment in response to the announcement Friday from the Department of Justice. 

However in a separate inquiry, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York are still looking into whether Governor Cuomo deliberately downplayed the number of deaths in nursing homes related to COVID. That investigation is not affected by this decision.