Loading player
The Tennessee state house on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers who had interrupted a legislative session in the previous days to ask for new laws to control and ban the sale of firearms. The protests of the two Democrats (Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, to which their colleague Gloria Johnson had joined) had taken place after the massacre carried out in a Nashville elementary school last week, in which a 28-year-old person had killed six people, including three children.
The expulsion of Democrats Jones and Pearson, who are two young African-American congressmen, was voted by the very large Republican majority of the state House. Two-thirds of the House vote is needed to expel a congressman, and Republicans have 75 out of 99, more than three-quarters. Formally, the expulsion took place because the two deputies allegedly held a «inappropriate behavior» in the protest of the previous days. The expulsion of Gloria Johnson was also put to a vote, but it didn’t pass by one vote. Johnson is white, and herself he said that the favorable vote against him “might have to do with the color of my skin”.
The expulsion was commented on rather emphatically by the national press: the Washington Post he defined it for example a “historic act”, because although it was not the first in local political history it is the first voted by a single party (the Republicans in this case) against members of the opposing party (Democrats). For the same reason the New York Times he described it as «an exceptional punitive act», while the CNN spoke of an “incredibly emotional parliamentary session, marked by intense verbal exchanges interrupted by boos and shouted slogans from spectators”.
After the massacre in the Nashville elementary school, hundreds of people protested to ask for new laws on the control of firearms and the prohibition of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, i.e. the most dangerous ones. For days, protesters – many of them students or parents with their children – had been protesting in Nashville, peacefully occupying the entrance to the state house building, which is still open to the public.
However, the response of the governor of the state, the Republican Bill Lee, and of the House with a Republican majority had gone in the opposite direction to the requests of the protesters: in recent days, the Republicans of Tennessee have approved a series of new laws that increase the security measures around to schools, without, however, changing the laws on the possession of weapons, which have indeed been made more permissive even recently.
Last week, the three Congressmen Jones, Pearson and Johnson also symbolically joined the protests against firearms, who stood up during a legislative session and with a megaphone began chanting anti-gun slogans. Some tension ensued between the Republican and Democratic congressmen.
A few days later, the Republican majority ejected Jones and Pearson from the House, saving Johnson instead (seven Republicans voted with the Democrats in his favor). In the debate leading up to the vote, some Republicans accused the three Democrats and peaceful protesters outside the hall of inciting an insurrection.
The Tennessee three — Reps. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson — walk into the floor to cheers from protesters ahead of House session. They face expulsion by the GOP for protesting gun violence.
📸 @Tennessean pic.twitter.com/QHCJzi4kqg
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) April 6, 2023
It is the third time since the end of the American Civil War (which ended in 1865) that Congressmen have been expelled from the Tennessee state house. In 1980 a deputy accused of corruption was expelled, and in 2016 the majority leader was expelled because he was accused of sexual harassment. In both cases, the votes had been largely bipartisan.
However, it is possible that Jones and Pearson will return to the House relatively soon: the expulsion does not prevent them from running again, and furthermore their interim replacements must be chosen by the electoral authorities of the counties in which they were elected. It is therefore likely that the electoral authorities will select Jones and Pearson to fill their own seats ad interim, and then the two will run again when the by-election is called.