The Tennessee House expelled both Justin Jones and Justin Pearson

Reply to Tentative Laws Disrupting the Progress of the Demonstration and the Action of the Tennessee Causal Lawmaker

The resolutions seek to remove the lawmakers from office under Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution, which says, in part, the House can set its own rules and “punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

Three resolutions filed by GOP lawmakers Monday seek to expel Reps. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, each of whom has already been removed from their committee assignments following last week’s demonstrations.

The speaker refused to let the thousands of people who were present at the Tennessee Capitol be heard. He wouldn’t allow us to talk about gun violence on the House floor. We did not have a place to address the community because we were ruled out of order when we brought it up. And so we had no other choice but to do something out of the ordinary and to try to stand in solidarity with disrupting business as normal, because business as normal was sticking our head in the sand when our children are dying.

“This is not just about losing my job,” he added, saying constituents of the three representatives “are being taken and silenced by a party that is acting like authoritarians.”

They acknowledged that they weren’t following the rules of order and decorum by speaking without being formally recognized. They’re facing a measure that hasn’t been used in over a century. Republicans believe that the trio’s actions are an insurrection.

Sexton said peaceful protestors have always been welcomed to the capitol to have their voices heard on any issue, but that the actions of the Democratic lawmakers had detracted from that process.

“In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones,” Sexton said in a series of tweets Monday.

“We cannot allow the actions of the three members to distract us from protecting our children. The solution to this will require all of us to talk about it.

Each of the resolutions states that the lawmakers brought disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives by disrupting the proceedings for less than an hour Thursday morning.

“My walk to the House floor in a peaceful and civil manner was not an insurrection. Pearson wrote a letter regarding the voices that weren’t given the chance to speak with him.

“If this House decides to expel me for exercising our sacred first amendment right to help elevate the voices in our community who want to see us act to prevent gun violence, then do as you feel you must,” Pearson wrote.

Rep. Gloria Johnson slammed the votes to remove Jones and Pearson as racist and she survived the ousting. Johnson said the reason for her not being expelled was pretty clear.

“Most expulsions have involved criminal conduct or abusive behavior, not suppression of dissent or targeting of political opponents,” state constitutional law expert Miriam Seifter told NPR in an email. “The Tennessee expulsions are therefore an extremely concerning outlier.”

“Instead of rushing to expel members for expressing their ethical convictions about crucial social issues,” Sinback said, “House leadership should turn to solving the real challenges facing our state.”

The Tennessee House is losing its democracy: Why the Legislature is losing it, and why the Assembly is going to go ‘no-lose’

The Tennessee House session is being live-streamed on social media. The vote and reporting from the scene is monitored by member station WPLN.

Lawmakers began to take up the question of expelling three of their colleagues shortly after 1 p.m. local time. During the proceeding, loud protests could occasionally be heard from off the chamber’s floor.

“What happened one week ago is that members … shut the order of this institution down, silenced 7 million people,” said Rep. Johnny Garrett, the House majority whip.

The seven-minute video was shown over objections of Democrats like Joe Towns, who spoke out against what he said was a “stacked deal” and an “ambush.”

The video was a compilation of footage from that day and afterward — and because it included video shot on the House floor, Democrats said whichever member had taken the footage had likely violated House rules.

Following their expulsion – which House Republicans said was in response to the representatives’ leadership of gun control demonstrations on the chamber floor last week – Jones and Pearson called for protesters to return to the Capitol when the House is back in session on Monday.

After a shooter killed three 9-year-old students and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville last week, Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.

More than 200,000 people would be out of a job if they’re expelled, according to Jones, Pearson and Johnson.

Pearson said that Tennessee is losing its democracy. “This is another example of the erosion of democracy because we spoke up for gun reform. We spoke up because we cared about the people who won’t become state legislators, those who won’t graduate from high school, and those who won’t be able to protest their own deaths because of gun violence.

Johnson told WPLN that this was not an insurrection. “We’ve had skirmishes on the floor that took this long to resolve, and there were never any consequences.”

Jones told CNN that the Republicans are using repressive methods to silence the opposition. “It’s very concerning and it represents a clear and present danger to democracy all across this nation,” Jones said. That should cause trouble for us all.

Republicans quickly criticized the three lawmakers for disrupting order and violating procedural rules in the chamber, which lasted nearly an hour.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the incident to Jan. 6: “What they did today was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, to doing an insurrection in the State Capitol,” he said.

Representative who have been expelled can return to their office by being appointed or re-elected. There is a state constitution that says a lawmaker cannot be expelled for the same offense again.

Before Durham, the last expelled representative was Rep. Robert Fisher, who was voted out of the chamber in 1980 after being convicted of seeking a bribe in exchange for scuttling a piece of legislation.

The first time a senator has been thrown out of the Tennessee Senate since the Civil War was in early 2022, when senators voted for the expulsion of senator after she was convicted of wire fraud.

The state Capitol was filled with protesters on Thursday to protest against the expulsions of two legislators and to advocate for gun reform in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville.

The Jones-Jaws Expulsion: What a Demonstration of the Nashville Gun Violence Dominated the Tennessee Legislature?

“I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said. She said Pearson and Jones were questioned in a terrible way before their expulsion.

Thursday’s expulsions have been criticized by Democratic politicians and civil liberties groups who say voters in Jones’s and Pearson’s districts have been disenfranchised. Others, including Jones, have said the move distracts from the real problem of gun violence.

President Joe Biden in a statement Thursday called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and criticized Republicans for not taking greater action on gun reform.

Jones said that the microphones on the microphones of other lawmakers were cut off when they asked about gun violence on the House floor.

Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN that the caucus believed the issue did not need to be considered by an ethics committee and accused Jones and Pearson of having a “history” of disrupting floor proceedings.

Faison said that it was impossible to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and the House floor. “There’s got to be some peace.”

Following their removal, pictures and profiles of Pearson and Jones have been pulled from the Tennessee General Assembly’s website and their districts have been listed as vacant.

To note, Representative Pearson blocked the oil project from being built in south Memphis. Gloria Johnson:District: 90Age: 60In office: 2013-2015, 2019-Issues: Education, jobs, health careOf note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansionRecent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. There are health care, environmental justice and of note, Wrote ” The People’s Plaza: 62 days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a sit-in.

Pearson said he hopes to “get re-appointed to serve in the state legislature by the Shelby County Commissioners, and a lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

Speaking to a crowd following their expulsion, Pearson and Jones insisted they would persist in advocate for gun control measures and encouraged protesters to continue showing up to the Capitol.

“We demand that democracy be for everybody, not just for rich White men in suits, not just for rich White people who got these positions of power perpetuating the status quo,” Pearson said.

Defending the State Legislature: Replacing the Last Two Speakers with a General Election in Nashville and the City-County Counties

The last two state representatives were expelled by the House. The first, in 1980, was a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent was in 2016 when another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

She continued, “It raises questions about the disparate treatment of Black representatives, while continuing the shameful legacy of disenfranchising and silencing the voices of marginalized communities and the Black lawmakers they elect.”

Local legislators in Jones and Pearson’s districts are working to find a solution to the two new vacancies in the state House.

According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

The code states that there needs to be a “writ of election” within 55 to 60 days. And a general election to fill the vacancy must be scheduled within 100 to 107 days.

Member station WPLN reports that the Metropolitan Council — the legislative body of the consolidated city-county government of Nashville and Davidson County — will hold a special meeting on Monday, where they may vote to reappoint Jones.

Jones told Don Lemon that he would serve if appointed by the council. “I have no regrets. He said that he will continue to fight for his people.

CNN reported that Lowery plans to call a special meeting regarding Pearson but the timing is not yet known.

The Tennessee House Speaker’s Comeback after a National Reionization Activist Shooting: Is it an example of weaponizing legislative discipline?

State legislator in Tennessee must be at least 21 years old, have a US citizenship, reside in the state for three years and be a resident of the county for a year before the election.

And while the state Constitution says members can be expelled for disorderly behavior with a two-thirds majority vote, they cannot be expelled “a second time for the same offense.”

If Jones and Pearson are elected again, the Tennessee House Republican Caucus hopes that they will act like the thousands of people they have come before, with respect for their institution, and the seat that they hold.

The vote came a week after three lawmakers interrupted a floor session with a megaphone, leading protesters in calls for stronger gun laws in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that left six people dead.

Jones agrees. Speaking to Morning Edition on Friday, he accused Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton of having “trafficked in racial rhetoric and racism.”

This is the fourth time NPR has sought comment from Sexton on Jones’ claims. But he told reporters after the vote that the decision was based on “the actions of those three that they did on the House floor on that day,” and the body needing to follow the proper “process and procedures.”

We’ll go through that process once the time comes, if the council decides to reappoint the lawmakers who were kicked out. According to Tennessee’s constitution, lawmakers can’t be expelled more than once for the same offense.

The next day the speaker already stripped my committees from me, he had my ID badge to the building turned off even though I was still a representative at the time, shut off my parking privileges to park at the legislature, and so that was the reaction that we saw.

But then because the speaker falsely mischaracterized our nonviolent peaceful protest and solidarity with the people as an insurrection, he escalated the situation not only against us but against those thousands of young people at the Capitol who were protesting, simply saying that they want to live, in the days following a mass shooting here in Nashville.

A political scientist told NPR that this week’s protest in Tennessee was an example of power being used to send a political message.

According to the co-directors of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law school, weaponizing legislative discipline reveals a concerning level of democratic dysfunction. She added, “it suggests that more attention should focus on state-level government.”

This is the first time multiple Tennessee legislators have been ousted in a single legislative session since 1866, when Tennessee was struggling to adopt citizenship rights for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War.

Krishnakumar believes that it’s not an accident that we have to return to the post-Civil War era to see similar behavior by a legislature.

Of course, the current environment of intense political polarization extends beyond Tennessee. So, could majorities in other state legislatures follow suit, and expel politicians with whom they can’t agree?

“Unlike other ways that state legislators may entrench their power or act in a countermajoritarian fashion (a pattern I’ve written about here), disciplinary actions are typically self-limiting,” she added.

Krishnakumar says elected officials are hunting for ways to score points with their supporters and one-up the opposing party.