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Tennessee GOP lawmakers expel two Democrats, spare one over gun control protest
The two expelled Democrats, both Black men, were two of the youngest members of the House. The other Democrat not expelled, a white woman, believes race played a role in their dismissal.
Marquise Francis, National Reporter – April 6, 2023
The majority-Republican Tennessee House voted to expel two Democrats and spared a third Thursday afternoon after the trio of lawmakers led a protest on the House floor last week to demand action on gun control in the wake of the latest deadly school shooting in Nashville last Monday that claimed the lives of six people, including three children.
State representatives Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, both Black and two of the youngest members of the Legislature, were voted out of the House with vote tallies of 72-25 and 69-26 respectively, while Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a white woman, was spared by one vote with a vote tally of 65-30.
It takes two-thirds of the House to officially expel a member and Tennessee House is made up of 75 Republicans and 23 Democrats, with one vacancy.
When asked what made the difference between her outcome and those of her former colleagues, Johnson told a group of reporters shortly after her vote that “it might have to do with the color of our skin.”
Johnson also vowed to do everything in her power to fight to get the jobs back for her colleagues.
The trio of Democrats — who in recent days have gained notoriety as the so-called Tennessee Three — said they understood that they were breaking decorum when they approached the podium last week with a bullhorn chanting, “No action, no peace!” They were echoing the sentiments of thousands of students, parents and community members they had met with earlier that day, many of whom were still present and shouting from the gallery above the chamber, having grown impatient as the majority GOP House worked through various pieces of legislation, but none addressing guns.
The Democrats had expected consequences for their actions, they admit, but had no idea it would cost them their jobs.
Republicans on Monday introduced legislation to expel the three Democrats for “disorderly behavior,” with GOP House Speaker Cameron Sexton likening the public display to an “insurrection.”
“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 on “The Hal Show Podcast” the evening of the outburst. “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.”
Sexton did not return Yahoo News’ request for comment.
When Johnson joined her two former colleagues in boisterous chants for gun reform on the state Capitol’s House floor last Thursday during a recess between bills, it was largely because she knows firsthand about the trauma that plagues, even at times consumes, an individual after experiencing a school shooting.
In the wake of the latest deadly school shooting in Nashville last week that claimed the lives of six people, including three children, Johnson recalls her own school shooting experience in the state fifteen years prior.
The Democratic lawmaker was a teacher more than a decade ago at Central High School in Knoxville when in 2008 a student fatally shot a 15-year-old classmate during a dispute. As those unsettling memories returned with this most recent tragedy, Johnsons said she felt silenced by the majority Republican-led House for not formally bringing a gun control discussion to the floor — so she and two others took it upon themselves.
“As an educator who’s been in a school when there was a school shooting, we have to [make] this issue paramount,” Johnson, who represents Knoxville, told Yahoo News, recalling the psychological aftermath that the 2008 shooting had on the community. “It was a trauma-filled day and a sad day – and we lost a life. It had a serious effect on students.”
Republicans also stripped the lawmakers – who represent the state’s largest three cities with about 80,000 constituents each – of their committee assignments and revoked building access.
‘Chilling effect across the country’
Ahead of the expulsion votes, Johnson believed the move would have sweeping ramifications across the rest of the country.
“This is going to have a chilling effect across the country, especially in red states,” she said. “It’s going to scare people from talking about real issues. … [Republicans] thought they would take this opportunity to take these respected voices in the state away and didn’t take a second to think about what they were doing.”
Pearson, who was elected to his seat in January, claims that Republicans in the state House are “silently complicit to gun companies,” which is leading to an “erosion of democracy.”
“There were thousands outside wanting us to stand up,” Pearson told Yahoo News. “I come from a community that [deals with gun violence regularly]. We want action so we don’t have this issue. This is indicative of the silencing.”
Leaders from across the country have also echoed this sentiment.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre slammed Tennessee Republicans for taking swift action on the Democrats’ protest, but failing to address legitimate solutions that could prevent another school shooting.
“The fact that this vote is happening is shocking, undemocratic and without precedent across Tennessee and across America, our kids are paying the price for the actions of Republican lawmakers who continue to refuse to take action on stronger gun laws,” Jean-Pierre said during Thursday’s press briefing.
Guns remain the leading cause of death for children and adolescents under the age of 19 since surpassing car accidents in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021 alone, firearms accounted for nearly one in five deaths of children.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the deadliest elementary school shooting in American history happened in 2012, called the move to expel the legislators “bone-chilling.”
“I’m not excusing yelling out of turn on the House floor,” Murphy tweeted Tuesday. “Civility still matters in politics. But expulsion is an extreme measure of last resort, not the first step when someone breaks the House floor rules. And the double standard tells you everything you need to know.”
Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the impending expulsion “infuriating and anti-democratic.”
Jones, who at 27 is one of the youngest members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, told CNN Wednesday that the move to expel him and his colleagues is “morally insane.”
“It’s very concerning and it represents a clear and present danger to democracy all across this nation that should trouble us all,” he said.
But some critics are cautious to overstate the effects of an expulsion. Thomas Goodman, an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Law at Rhodes College in Memphis, believes there are ways to be disruptive within the confines of procedure.
“I fear this could lead to a chilling effect on other Republican-led states, possibly deterring the voicing of dissident opinions in states where abortion laws and gun control policy do not neatly align with the majority’s views,” Goodman said in an email to Yahoo News. “But why limit it to Republican-led states? What about the potential for Democratic-majority states to act in similarly abusive ways?”
“Democrats in other states could continue expressing their opinions and offering dissent, but through mechanisms that do not disrupt parliamentary procedures, within acceptable parliamentary channels,” he said.
Concerns of a double standard
The move to expel the three Democrats has also raised concerns of a double standard within the Republican-controlled State House that in recent years declined to take action against a member accused of sexual misconduct and another facing an indictment for violating federal campaign finance laws. Another unidentified Republican member of the House allegedly urinated on a colleague’s chair.
“Evidently these are not expulsion-worthy displays of unethical behavior or lack of decorum,” Carrie Russell, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University told Yahoo News in an email, while duly acknowledging that a move like this “signals that dissent and protesting against the stated agenda, regardless of the context, will procedurally engender the most extreme measures – rendering their seats vacant and removing the ability of the voters in the states’ most diverse districts to receive representation in the halls of government.”
Since the Civil War, just two other members of the House have been expelled for much more egregious actions. Most recently, in 2016 then-Rep. Jeremy Durham, a Republican, was removed from the House over allegations of sexual misconduct with at least 22 women. Prior to that, in 1980, then-Rep. Robert Fisher, a Republican, was expelled after being convicted of soliciting a bribe in exchange for attempting to prevent pending legislation from going through.
Because of these serious infractions in the past leading to expulsion, political experts say a move to remove legislators for protesting out of turn would set a troubling precedent.
“Expulsion directly removes a duly elected official. It takes the decision out of the hands of the electorate,” Susan Haynes, an associate professor of political science at Lipscomb University in Nashville, told Yahoo News, adding that expulsion in this circumstance, “lessens the threshold for what qualifies as an expellable offense.”
“Neither the Tennessee Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution specifies what constitutes an expellable offense, so there is significant ambiguity there, but if we make this a political decision and weaponize the process, it sets a dangerous precedent,” she said.
Jana Morgan, a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and co-author of the book Hijacking the Agenda: Economic Power and Political Influence sees two possible results from an expulsion that could result in contrasting outcomes.
“Expelling these legislators would immediately strip thousands of Tennesseeans of elected representation in the state Legislature, and the expulsion proceedings could work to silence the voices that these members aimed to amplify,” Morgan told Yahoo News. “At the same time, the ripple effects from this expulsion effort could actually galvanize the supporters of the Tennessee Three as well as gun control advocates across the state and country.”
Fanning the flames of heightened frustrations, on Monday, Republican Rep. Justin Lafferty allegedly assaulted Jones as he held his phone to film on the House floor as community members in the gallery above the House floor chanted “fascists”.
“This is a sad day for Tennessee,” Jones said in a tweet capturing the incident.
Johnson called the incident an example of “privilege” at work. But beyond the infighting and tense exchanges in the past week, she says, what’s most frustrating is the fact that real human lives are at stake. Having been in elected office off and on for a decade, Johnson said she’s seen the decay of bipartisan work for the greater good.
Dating back to when she was first elected in 2013, Johnson recalls a time when, “We were on both sides of the aisle, but we would get along. Now there’s a meanness with this new class even more. It’s concerning and we are moving further and further away from democracy.”
Republicans push back
Still, Republicans appear to be holding their ground.
Republican Rep. Gino Bulso, who sponsored Johnson’s expulsion, said during an appearance on the conservative Daily Wire podcast on Wednesday that the trio’s actions warrant their discipline.
“They voluntarily disqualified themselves from further service,” Bulso said. “Rather than comply with their oath to the Constitution and comply with the rules, they decided to go outside of the House and effectively shut it down. And so what we’re simply doing is recognizing that they’ve voluntarily chosen to put themselves outside the House and formally expel them.”
Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, sees some lingering questions for the state House’s ultimate voting body.
“The key question is whether the lawmakers are being punished for their actions or their speech,” he said. “If no one has ever been expelled for comparably disruptive behavior in the chamber, there’s a strong argument that they’re being punished for their speech, which would violate the First Amendment. … This has the feel of retaliation for criticism directed at House members.”
As for expectations ahead of Thursday’s votes, Pearson thinks this is likely his last week as an elected official. But the work, he says, never stops.
“I expect the majority of those people to expel us in an attempt to expel us [as people], but you can’t silence us,” he said. “We are going to continue to do the work to not be silenced.”
Cover thumbnail: Seth Herald/Getty Images