Ten days after a shooter unloaded 152 rounds at a Nashville school and killed six people, Tennessee House Republicans on Thursday expelled from the General Assembly two Democratic lawmakers for breaking House rules and mounting a gun-reform protest on the chamber’s floor.
After hours of fiery debate, the House expelled Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, on a 72-25 vote, and Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, 69-26, in a move that put the nation’s eyes on Tennessee and its politics.
But the House failed to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to kick Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, out of the chamber. The effort to expel Johnson failed on a 65-30 vote, as chants “Gloria! Gloria!” rang out in the House chamber.
The historic, party-line expulsion process has roiled political tensions as the state continues to grapple with the deadliest school shooting in its history. The debate drew widespread attention beyond Tennessee, with the nation’s eyes on the Volunteer State and thousands of protesters objecting to the expulsion.
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With the expulsions, Republicans removed two of the youngest Black lawmakers in the General Assembly, further reducing an already small minority caucus.
Still, with the expulsions, Republican leadership have elevated the two lawmakers’ political profiles, possibly with little long-term gains for the chamber as Pearson and Jones could be reappointed to their seats within days or weeks.
“What is happening here today is a farce of democracy,” Jones said at the beginning of his 20-minute defense, after gazing up at a packed gallery holding signs in his defense. “What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict. What we see today is just a spectacle. What we see today is a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process.”
Jones at one point took a long pause, taking a few sips of water, allowing the chants of “whose house, our house,” to flow into the chamber from the crowd gathered outside.
“Your extreme measure is an attempt to subvert the will of voters who democratically elected us as representatives to speak and to passionately fight for them,” Jones said.
President Joe Biden issued a statement on Thursday night: “Today’s expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent. Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”
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The expulsions for the two were effective immediately, leading Jones to gather his personal items from his desk. He later took a seat in the House gallery, now as a member of the public watching the legislative hearing below him.Lawmakers considered the fate of the three Democrats steps away from hundreds of protesters whose chants permeated the House doors, while more than 200 people stood in silence in the House galleries, many holding signs decrying the proceedings. Protesters continued to call on Republican lawmakers to pass gun reform and slammed the efforts to expel the lawmakers, who have been dubbed the “Tennessee three.”
The trio was accused of breaching decorum and floor rules for speaking at the House podium on March 30 without recognition.
Pearson and Jones, both freshman lawmakers who had previously clashed with leadership on other issues this session, walked up to the House podium during a floor session and using a bullhorn began leading gun reform chants, echoing the shouts of protesters packed into the Capitol rotunda. The pair, later flanked by Johnson, grew frustrated as House leadership moved on to regular business just days after the mass shooting.
House Republicans showed a video montage of the events during the expulsion debate, over the objections of Democrats. The video included footage taken from the House floor by a lawmaker, and Democrats accused Republicans of breaking House rules forbidding members from recording floor sessions. The debate then centered on whether the House was formally in session at the time the lawmaker took the video.
“This is just not about one specific instance or one specific rule that may have been broken. The rules here are for order,” said Rep. Johnny Garrett, R-Goodlettsville, who led the GOP arguments against Jones. “We owe that to the constituents that we represent across this state.”
The expulsions will strip more than 200,000 Tennesseans of their elected representation and marks just the fourth time since the end of the Civil War in which the House ousted sitting lawmakers. No House member has ever been removed from elected office for simply violating decorum rules.
After relieving the lawmakers of committee assignments and shutting off their building access over the weekend, the Republican supermajority moved swiftly Monday to start the expulsion process, among the first legislative actions taken by the General Assembly related to the March 27 mass shooting that killed six, including three 9-year-olds.
Sarah Neumann, the mom to a 5-year-old who attends The Covenant School, watched the expulsion hearings from the House gallery. Pearson at one point went upstairs to give her a hug.
“I just want Noah to know I did something for him,” she said, noting she wanted to come to the Capitol to honor the Covenant victims Katherine Koonce, Mike Hill, Cynthia Peak, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, and she thinks of the shooter’s family as well.
Thousands of Tennesseans have marched en masse on the state Capitol three times in the 10 days since the tragedy, demanding gun reform measures the ruling party is hesitant, if not outright opposed, to publicly support.
Covenant School shooting in Nashville:3 children, 3 adults dead; victims’ names released
Pearson later said he could not “sit idly by” after lawmakers that day walked through a gauntlet of protesters, many of whom were teenagers, screaming for gun reform.
“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 told his colleagues in a Monday letter. “We must always stand up for what we believe to be right and just, we must say no to more gun violence. We must prioritize the voices of thousands of families that are hurting due to this country’s gun violence epidemic, especially in communities like District 86.”
The trio were not recognized to speak, an official breach of floor rules, which led House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, to recess the House and huddle with leadership for nearly an hour. Democratic leadership led the three off the floor, and they later continued on with House business. But within days the lawmakers were stripped of their committee assignments and lost badge access to the legislative office building.
Sexton later likened the events to an “insurrection,” even comparing the peaceful protest that resulted in zero arrests to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. Though he later walked back the comments, saying his remarks were directed at the three lawmakers and not protesters. Sexton this week said he considered the unprecedented floor protest an act “against civil authority.”
“What they did was try to hold up the people’s business on the House floor instead of doing it the way that they should have done it, which they have the means to do,” Sexton said. “They actually thought that they would be arrested, and so they decided that them being a victim was more important than focusing on the six victims from Monday. And that’s appalling.”
GOP wields supermajority power
The Thursday vote was widely viewed as a certainty as soon as the Republican caucus voted to file expulsion resolutions. For some, the partisan expulsions are a stark reminder of the supermajority power Republicans have amassed over the state’s Democratic, urban areas.
“I’m devastated. I am,” said protester Ashley Anderson, rain dripping off her hood as she stood in line to enter the Capitol. “There’s so many emotions that go into how I feel about it. It’s really hard to put words to it that this. It’s fascist. It is undemocratic. You’re leaving 200,000 constituents of the state without any representation. What is this? This is our freedom at stake.“
Jones’ removal would mark the third major circumvention of Nashville voters in the last year, after an aggressive congressional redistricting effort in 2022 split Davidson County and parceled its majority-Democratic voter base into Republican-held districts. More recently, infuriated after the Nashville council blocked a bid to host the Republican Nashville Convention, lawmakers drew up multiple bills to shrink the Metro Council and snatch back control of governing boards such as the local airport and sports authorities.
In General Assembly history, a partisan expulsion vote like Thursday’s is unusual, and an expulsion push over a decorum breach is unprecedented.
Emotions ran high on Thursday morning after Jones opposed a school safety bill presented by Republicans, arguing it would further militarize schools while not addressing gun reform issues. Other Democrats said they were concerned the bill treats the “symptoms” of school shootings, not the problem.
“That’s what is supposed to happen on this House floor when we debate legislation. We hear each other, we don’t hear the hate, we don’t hear the vitriol. It worked today, it can work for the future,” Garrett said. “One week ago, it didn’t work. One week ago we had members take it upon themselves to rush the well and stop the people’s business.
Garrett said the protest, by shutting down the work of the House, “silenced 7 million” Tennesseans. Protesters in the gallery shook their heads as he spoke.
But House Minority Leader Karen Camper, D-Memphis, defended her colleagues.
“Rep. Jones represents thousands of people in this state whose voices have been silenced time and time and time again,” she said. “We had just had this mass shooting, and he only wanted to elevate the voices of those people. For a simple rule violation, we have elevated this to the highest level of admonishment. That’s not democracy.”
Past expulsions bipartisan votes
The House last expelled a sitting lawmaker in 2016, when the chamber voted 70-2 to remove then-Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin, over allegations he had harassed nearly two dozen women while in office. In 1980, then-Rep. Robert Fisher was expelled on a 92-1 vote after a bribery conviction.
Six lawmakers were ousted during an 1866 special session after they tried to prevent Tennessee from ratifying an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide citizenship to former slaves.
The Senate expelled a member for the first time last year following the conviction of Sen. Katrina Robinson, D-Memphis, on federal wire fraud charges.
An ethics committee was convened to investigate Robinson’s case before it was brought to a vote, which Bruce Oppenheimer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, said is typical procedure. Special committees took up the Durham and Fisher cases.
Johnson this week decried the expulsion as a double-standard and politically motivated. Last year, former House Speaker Glen Casada, R-Franklin, faced federal charges related to alleged crimes committed while in office was allowed to finish out his term, while current leadership in 2019 declined to support expulsion charges against former Rep. David Byrd, who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers when he was a basketball coach decades earlier.
Lawmakers have contentious history with the three
All three lawmakers have at times publicly clashed with Republican leadership prior to The Covenant School shooting.
While Jones is a freshman lawmaker, he is no stranger to the Capitol and led public protests against the lawmakers who later became his colleagues. In 2019, he led sit-ins to call for the removal of the bust of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Capitol, and was once arrested for tossing liquid at the former House speaker.
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Johnson was first elected to her Knoxville district in 2012 after retiring from teaching. After losing a reelection campaign twice to a Republican opponent, she won the seat back in 2018 and last year won election in a new district after redistricting.
She’s long been an outspoken Democrat, particularly decrying Tennessee’s no-exceptions abortion ban in recent months.
Pearson joined the legislature via appointment, following the death of Rep. Barbara Cooper, D-Memphis, last fall. Like Jones, the 28-year-old rose through local advocacy circles, co-founding a grassroots organization now credited with stopping a proposed crude oil pipeline from cutting through South Memphis backyards.
House Republicans publicly scolded Pearson after he wore a traditional West African dashiki on the House floor on his first day in office.
The path forward
Despite the high-profile expulsions, the three could technically return to the House within days.
The Tennessee Constitution allows a county governing body to appoint an interim representative in the case of a vacancy, an authority General Assembly Republicans could not easily revoke.
An expulsion does not disqualify a former representative from running for office, which could mean one of the expelled lawmakers could be appointed interim, run for reelection and be reseated in the General Assembly within months.
Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, repeatedly stated Jones wanted to be expelled, but noted the Constitution would allow him to elected again after expulsion. “If after looking at his conduct, they vote he come back, we will recognize him as a representative,” Bulso said, referring to the floor protest as a “mutiny.”
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The trio has demurred this week on future plans, instead choosing to focus on the upcoming expulsion vote. Johnson on Monday indicated she was consulting with lawyers, though one attorney said pursuing a lawsuit could be an uphill battle given as the state Constitution gives the legislature express authority to discipline and expel its own members.
“Ultimately, it falls under the separation of powers,” attorney David Raybin said. “The constitution prevents the legislature from interfering too much with the courts. Similarly, the constitution prevents the courts from interfering with the inner-workings of the legislature. A court would decline to review that.”
Vivian Jones, Nicole Hester, Angele Latham, Katherine Burgess and Tyler Whetstone contributed.