U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and 10 Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter Friday to committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) asking for a hearing “on the civil rights of senior citizens in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey nursing homes following their death rates due to COVID-19 and the decision by these states to force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients.”
Co-signers, in addition to ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Kennedy (R-LA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).
“Congressional oversight is needed to ensure the protection of seniors’ civil rights and to seek justice for seniors in long-term care facilities who lost their lives to COVID-19, given the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division’s recent announcement that it will not ‘open a CRIPA (Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act) investigation of any public nursing facility within New York, Pennsylvania or Michigan at this time,’ ” the senators wrote.
“This decision not to pursue potential civil rights violations in states with high-profile Democrat governors raises serious concerns that the Biden administration is acting based on politics, not the law,” they continued.
The proposed Judiciary Committee hearing would focus on why the Department of Justice declined to pursue an investigation and who made that decision, as well as determine whether these states “violated seniors’ civil rights by sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, whether any of these states lied about COVID-19 deaths, and whether the Department of Justice is thoroughly and impartially investigating these matters.”
