The Tennessee House votes to expel two of three Democratic members over a gun protest

Tennessee’s Republican-led House voted Thursday to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers who recently led a raucous protest from the House floor calling for gun law reforms.

Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, were both removed from the House in a disciplinary measure used only twice since the 1800s. The votes were 72-25 and 69-26, respectively. They represent a combined constituency of about 130,000 people.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who represents approximately 70,000 Tennesseans, escaped the same fate by a single vote, with a final count of 65 – 30.

Following the failed vote, Johnson was asked by reporters if she thought there was a reason she had a different outcome. “I’ll answer your question,” she said. “It could be due to the colour of our skin.”

Jones and Pearson are both Black, while Johnson is white.

The expelled lawmakers admitted they violated decorum by walking on the floor — known as the well — and speaking without being formally recognised.

Republicans called the trio’s actions an insurrection.

The trio, dubbed “The Tennessee Three” by supporters, have already been removed from their committee assignments.

What happened on Thursday?

Soon after 1 p.m. local time, lawmakers began debating whether to expel three of their colleagues. Throughout the proceedings, loud protests could be heard from outside the chamber’s floor.

Tennessee’s Republican-led House voted Thursday to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers who recently led a raucous protest from the House floor calling for gun law reforms.

Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, were both removed from the House in a disciplinary measure used only twice since the 1800s. The votes were 72-25 and 69-26, respectively. They represent a combined constituency of about 130,000 people.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who represents approximately 70,000 Tennesseans, escaped the same fate by a single vote, with a final count of 65 – 30.

Following the failed vote, Johnson was asked by reporters if she thought there was a reason she had a different outcome. “I’ll answer your question,” she said. “It could be due to the colour of our skin.”

Jones and Pearson are both Black, while Johnson is white.

The expelled lawmakers admitted they violated decorum by walking on the floor — known as the well — and speaking without being formally recognised.

A motion was passed to give Johnson, Pearson, and Jones each 20 minutes to speak on their own behalf, including time for their attorneys.

Jones was the first of the three to address the chamber, explaining his actions on the well of the floor on March 30.

“The entire world is watching Tennessee,” he said. “What is happening here today is a farce of democracy.”

He referred to the Republican membership as a “lynch mob” eager to enact the “ultimate punishment” against himself, Johnson, and Pearson.

“I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I wasn’t standing for myself,” Jones explained. “I was campaigning for those young people, many of whom are unable to vote yet. Many of them are disenfranchised. But they are all terrified by the ongoing trend of mass shootings in our state and across the country.”

Jones also noted how rare it is for the House or Senate to take such drastic action against a sitting, elected representative.

“This is not a temple. This is a place where we are supposed to wrestle for our democracy and wrestle ideas “Jones added.

Former Rep. John Mark Windle, Johnson’s attorney, called the resolution a “outright lie” and a “outright distortion of her conduct.”

Windle argued that, contrary to the motion submitted for her removal from the House, Johnson never shouted, pounded the podium, or displayed a sign containing a political statement while she was in the well last week, all of which would be in violation of House rules.

Windle stated that expulsion has been reserved for those who take bribes, commit sexual offences, or are felons.

“She is not a felon, she is not a misdemeanour, she is not a sex offender, she is not the subject of a federal grand jury investigation, she has never had a single ethics violation… simply put, she has never broken the public trust,” he said.

In response to a Republican lawmaker’s question, Johnson denied shouting from the floor.

“I absolutely never yelled,” she said, adding that she “did not speak in a voice louder than any other member on this floor.”

Later, she added, “I may have broken a rule by approaching the well, but much of what is in this document is false.”

Johnson also discussed her experience as a teacher during a school shooting at a Knoxville high school in 2008. Although she is now retired, Johnson says she still spends a lot of time on school campuses and jumps whenever she hears the sound of a police siren or an ambulance.

“Every time because you never get that out of your head,” she explained.

Rep. Justin Pearson attacked the allegations against him in several ways.

Republicans called the trio’s actions an insurrection.

The trio, dubbed “The Tennessee Three” by supporters, have already been removed from their committee assignments.

Here’s more context and how we got here. (You can also keep up with member station WPLN’s updates.)

What happened on Thursday?

Soon after 1 p.m. local time, lawmakers began debating whether to expel three of their colleagues. Throughout the proceedings, loud protests could be heard from outside the chamber’s floor.

First, he claimed that as a freshman representative, he was not informed of all House rules, as well as when and how they apply.

“I was told that we were crowding around the clerk’s desk,” he said, referring to the language in the motion against him and his colleagues. “And, to be honest, I just realised they were talking about this desk and not the one up there,” he said, pointing to the speaker’s desk.

He added: “There are a lot of things in these resolutions that seem to assume a lot of knowledge about what I’m supposed to know. What we’re supposed to know in the absence of actual facts about what we’ve been told.”

Pearson also denied that he and the others’ protest disrupted the day’s proceedings.

“I didn’t disrupt proceedings between 10:50 and 11:42 because it wouldn’t have been possible. We were at a break “he stated.

“None of us thought we were doing anything that deserved expulsion from the House,” he explained, adding that House rules state that a member who violates the rules of decorum should face “censure” rather than “expulsion.”

Earlier in the proceedings, Rep. Johnny Garrett, the House majority whip, played a seven-minute video of events from that day, over the objections of Democrats including Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., D-Memphis, who spoke out against what he called a “stacked deal” and a “ambush.”

The video was a compilation of footage from that day and later, and because it included footage shot on the House floor, Democrats said whoever took the footage had likely violated House rules.

Following the Nashville school shooting, a House protest was held.
The expulsion vote came one week after Reps. Johnson, Jones, and Pearson used a loudhailer to lead chants of demonstrators in the House gallery.

Days earlier, a 28-year-old assailant shot and killed six people at a Nashville elementary school, prompting crowds of students and parents to visit the legislature, urging new controls.

Jones, Pearson, and Johnson chastised Republican leaders for failing to respond to the call for gun control in the aftermath of the mass-shooting crisis in the United States. They did so, they claimed, to amplify the voices of protesters and constituents.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday to protest the vote and call for gun control, according to WPLN’s Lexi Marshall.

What are the three lawmakers saying?

Before the vote, Jones, Pearson, and Johnson stated that if they were expelled, more than 200,000 Tennesseans would lose the representatives they had lawfully elected last fall.

“We are losing our democracy in Tennessee,” Pearson told WPLN. “This is yet another example of democracy eroding because we advocated for gun control. Because we spoke up for people and children who will never become state legislators, who will never graduate from high school and never get involved, who will never be able to see or protest for their own lives because they were killed by gun violence.”

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

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

Prioritizing punishing lawmakers over a procedural violation after a school shooting is “morally insane,” according to Jones.

What are Republicans saying?

Republicans immediately chastised the three lawmakers for disrupting order and breaking procedural rules in the chamber, which they claim lasted nearly an hour.

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

Sexton also mentioned that Jones and Johnson had previously been “very vocal about Jan. 6 and what that was.”

The three nearly identical resolutions to expel Jones, Johnson, and Pearson accuse them of disorderly behaviour that “reflects negatively on the integrity and dignity” of the House.

What are the House rules regarding expulsion?

Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution empowers the House to “punish its members for disorderly behaviour” and to expel members with a two-thirds majority vote.

Jones’ and Pearson’s seats will become vacant. Because the general election in 2024 is more than a year away, their districts will hold special elections to fill the seats. County commissions can also appoint an interim lawmaker to serve until a special election is held.

Representatives who are expelled can reclaim their seats by being appointed by the commission or running again. The state constitution also states that a lawmaker cannot be expelled a second time for the same offence.

Who else has been expelled?

In 2016, state Rep. Jeremy Durham was expelled after being found to have engaged in “disorderly behaviour” — Durham was facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct at the time.

Prior to 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.

“Where does courtesy end and a bribe begin?” At the time, Fisher inquired.

Both votes to expel Durham and Fisher were overwhelmingly bipartisan.

The Tennessee Senate voted to expel Sen. Katrina Robinson in early 2022 after she was convicted of wire fraud — “the first time the chamber has removed a senator since at least the Civil War,” according to the Associated Press.