April 12, 2023 Second ousted lawmaker headed back to Tennessee House

Justin Pearson enters the meeting room of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, April 12, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Justin J. Pearson gave fiery remarks following the vote Wednesday by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners to appoint him to represent the district in the Tennessee House of Representatives after he was expelled last week.

“Nashville thought they could silence democracy, but they didn’t know that the Shelby County Commission was filled with some courageous leaders,” said Pearson, who will serve on an interim basis in the legislature.

He added, speaking to cheering supporters:

Hear Justin J. Pearson give remarks following his reinstatement from our affiliate WMC:

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Justin Pearson and his supporters march to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners meeting in Memphis on Wednesday.

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday voted to confirm the reappointment of Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee House of Representatives, sending him back to fill the House District 86 seat as an interim representative.   

The vote to return Pearson to his seat — vacated last Thursday when the GOP-dominated chamber expelled the state representative after he and two other Democrats called for gun reform on the chamber floor — came after the board voted to suspend a rule that would have required a waiting period between his nomination and confirmation.  

Justin J. Pearson arrived at a special meeting of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners Wednesday.

The crowd of spectators cheered when he walked into the room. Pearson marched with supporters from the National Civil Rights Museum at The Lorraine Motel.

During the meeting, Pearson is expected to be reappointed to the Tennessee House of Representatives for the 86th district on an interim basis. He was expelled from his seat last week after protesting gun violence on the House floor without being recognized.

The other state lawmaker who was ousted, Rep. Justin Jones, was reappointed in his Nashville district on Monday.

Ousted Democratic lawmaker Justin J. Pearson is now marching to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, where he is expected to be reappointed to the Tennessee House of Representatives for the 86th district on an interim basis.

Fellow lawmakers Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Gloria Johnson joined Pearson and a large crowd.

Jones was reinstated to his position Monday after being expelled with Pearson by House Republicans after their demonstration on the floor of the legislature following the deadly Nashville school shooting. Johnson narrowly avoided expulsion.

The vote to remove the two lawmakers, who are Black, caused an uproar in the state with demonstrators coming out to support the young politicians.

Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson and Justin Jones speak before marching to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners meeting in Memphis on Wednesday, where it is expected Pearson will be reinstated to his position in the Tennessee House.

Justin J. Pearson, one of two Democratic lawmakers expelled by the GOP-controlled Tennessee House last week, said he is going to keep fighting because the “status quo needs changing.”

Pearson, speaking to a crowd at a Memphis rally Wednesday, was joined by Rep. Justin Jones, who was recently reappointed after being expelled, and Rep. Gloria Johnson, who narrowly avoided being ousted.

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners is expected to vote later Wednesday at a special meeting in Memphis on whether Pearson will be reappointed on an interim basis.

The crowd gathered at the National Civil Rights Museum at The Lorraine Motel before marching to the Shelby County meeting.

The lawmakers, who call themselves the “Tennessee Three,” came under fire from Republican leadership after holding a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized.

Pearson said the protests in support of the lawmakers that followed their expulsion showed that the “movement is still alive.”

Johnson supported Pearson, calling for new, younger and more diverse voices in the state capital. She told the Memphis crowd that Pearson is “doing an amazing job lifting your voices in Nashville.”

Jones said he is confident that Pearson will be reappointed at the special meeting Wednesday afternoon as he led a chant with the crowd: “Forward together, not one step back.”

“So when we walk into that chamber tomorrow as representatives again, we must continue the demands that led us there in the first place,” Jones said. “That a week after a mass shooting hit Nashville, rather than pass common sense gun laws, they passed a resolution to expel the two youngest Black members in the general assembly.”

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee responds to questions during a news conference Tuesday, April 11, in Nashville.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he will ask the state legislature to bring forth a measure strengthening the state’s gun laws “to remove individuals who are a threat to themselves or our society (and) to remove them from access to weapons.”

Lee said he would like to see the legislation passed within the current legislative session, which ends in just a few weeks.

He went on to say that he plans to also sign an executive order strengthening the state’s gun background checks by setting a 72-hour window for reporting new criminal activity. Lee says the move will ensure courts provide timely and accurate information to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.

The executive order will also require the state bureau to analyze the current process for sharing information during the gun-buying process so changes can be made if necessary, Lee said.

Some context: The debate on gun reform was at the heart of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson’s expulsions last week. The two legislators, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson — who was not expelled — staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn in the wake of a recent mass school shooting in Nashville.

All three were accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”

Justin Pearson speaks outside the State Capitol after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel him and Justin Jones, in Nashville on Thursday, April 6.

Editor’s Note: Tennessee Rep. Justin J. Pearson is a Democrat and former community activist in Memphis. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

Republicans who instigated my removal from the Tennessee House last week, along with and that of my legislative colleague Rep. Justin Jones, apparently failed to anticipate the nationwide backlash that their actions would engender. Democracy prevailed and the rule of law has won.

This week, I plan to retake my seat. After a vote Wednesday by the Shelby County Commission, I hope and fully expect to once again represent the beautifully diverse jurisdiction of District 86 in Memphis in Tennessee’s Assembly — as I did until Thursday of last week, when Republicans voted to remove me and Rep. Jones.

The unprecedented and partisan move by the chamber’s Republican supermajority to expel me from my duly-elected position temporarily silenced the voices of my constituents and flouted their right to be represented in the House. But it failed — as it did for Rep. Jones, when he was sent back to the House on Monday following a vote by the council of his district in Metro Nashville.

This should be a chastening moment for revanchist forces in Tennessee’s legislature and across the country. Over the long haul, the undemocratic machinations employed to oust us from office are destined to fail. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once famously said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Events this week demonstrated, more than ever, that this is indeed the case.

The stated reason for my expulsion was that I, Rep. Jones and another Democratic colleague, Gloria Johnson, “breached decorum” by peacefully walking side by side to the well of the House Chamber to acknowledge rampant gun violence that has victimized and traumatized grieving children and families across our state and around the nation.

If decorum was breached, it was by the heavy-handed Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House, which denied us the chance to speak during regular order, cut off our microphones, later disabled our voting machines and revoked our access to the building.

My colleagues and I exercised our First Amendment rights and joined chants from the floor during a recess hastily called by House Speaker Cameron Sexton in a further attempt to silence us and our constituents.

We followed the directive of Article 2, Section 26 of the State Constitution to oppose policies injurious to the people who elected us. As a result, we were put on display in that very House to “stand trial” for our alleged offenses.

The spectacle was a gross miscalculation by Republicans in the chamber. It turns out that most Americans care deeply about democracy. Most people care about equality and progress. And over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre.

And yet, calls for common sense gun reform measures fall on deaf ears in our legislature where a Republican supermajority is wildly out of step with most people’s values.

Keep reading.

The Tennessee House of Representatives meets Oct. 27, 2021, in Nashville.

The Tennessee House Republicans said Monday they would welcome “any expelled member” who is reappointed after the Nashville Metropolitan Council unanimously voted to reinstate Rep. Justin Jones.

The expulsion of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson from the Tennessee House was a rare move. The House has only expelled two state representatives in the last 157 years.

The first expulsion, in 1980, was of a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent came in 2016 when another member was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move a “nuclear option.”

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, Kathy Sinback, called the move in a statement a “targeted expulsion of two Black legislators without due process.”

“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,” Sinback added.

Expelled State Rep. Justin Pearson delivers remarks outside the state Capitol on Monday, April 10, in Nashville.

Former Rep. Justin J. Pearson said he celebrated the fact that his colleague, Rep. Justin Jones, was reinstated Monday while also understanding another mass shooting had just taken place in Kentucky, not even a month after six people were gunned down in Nashville.

Pearson and Jones were expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday after the two of them and Rep. Gloria Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.

The chairman of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners has called a special meeting for Wednesday to consider reappointing Pearson to his former seat.

If reinstated, Pearson didn’t directly answer if he’d break the rules of decorum again. Instead, he responded: “Sometimes rules have to be broken for people who have been pushed to the periphery to be brought to the center of the conversation.”

Expelled Rep. Justin Pearson waves, Friday, April 7, 2023, in Nashville, the day after he and Rep. Justin Jones were expelled.

The second of two Democratic lawmakers expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives could soon return to the chamber, as officials in Memphis on Wednesday weigh whether to appoint him as an interim representative.

Here are key things to know about what is expected to happen today:

Today’s vote: Shelby County commissioners are set to vote Wednesday on appointing Justin J. Pearson to the House District 86 seat, which the 28-year-old vacated last week when he was forced out in a two-thirds majority vote by the GOP-dominated body after he and two Democratic colleagues participated in a demonstration calling for gun reform on the chamber floor.

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners will meet at 1:30 p.m. local time to take up the matter of Pearson’s vacant seat.

How the process works: If Pearson’s nomination passes with a simple majority, the council will need a two-thirds vote to suspend a rule that requires a cooling off period before a final confirmation vote.

If that vote passes, Pearson could return to the House as soon as Thursday, when he and a certified copy of the minutes from the council meeting are expected to arrive in Nashville, where lawmakers will be in session at 9 a.m. local time.

A rally will happen nearby: A rally in support of Pearson will be unfolding about a mile away at the National Civil Rights Museum, starting at noon local time.

The events that led us here: Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones, who are both Black, were expelled, though Jones was reinstated as an interim member and returned to the state House victorious Monday, following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council. Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White and participated in the demonstration on the floor of the House, survived the vote last week and kept her seat.

Tennessee law allows local legislative bodies to appoint interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held, and the vote to appoint Pearson is expected to follow a similar process to Jones’ earlier this week.

The lawmakers’ expulsions came as the long-simmering debate over guns in America boiled over in Tennessee following a mass shooting last month at a Nashville Christian school that left six people dead, including three 9-year-old children.

Tennessee GOP governor calls for tougher gun restrictions: Meanwhile, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday urged the state’s legislature to pass additional gun control measures.

“I’m asking the General Assembly to bring forward an order of protection law. A new strong order of protection law will provide the broader population cover, safety, from those who are a danger to themselves or the population,” Lee said at a news conference, adding that he would like to pass the legislation within the current legislative session, which ends in a few weeks.

The governor said specifics for the order of protection plan had yet to be determined but encouraged lawmakers from both parties to work together on the matter.

CNN’s Shawna Mizelle contributed reporting to this post.

Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis speaks with supporters after being expelled from the state Legislature on April 6 in Nashville.  

“Today was a powerful day and a testament to people power,” reinstated Rep. Justin Jones said Monday.

Jones, along with former Rep. Justin Pearson, was expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday after the two of them and fellow Democrat, Rep. Gloria Johnson, staged a demonstration on the floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.

On Monday, he returned to the legislature after a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council. Tennessee law allows local legislative bodies to appoint interim members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held.

Jones said being expelled and reinstated made him understand that “we need more representatives who are willing to risk a title to be with the people, to stand with the people. We need bold leadership.”

Now that he’s back in office, Jones was told he can file 15 bills – as he’s now technically a new member – which he said he plans to do by the end of the week.

Jones added, noting he’s 27 years old: “It’s time for a new generation of voices to step into their power here,” describing it as a movement to transform the community and the nation with “a new vision of a multicultural democracy.”

Tennessee state representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson leave the Tennessee State Capitol after a vote to expel them for their roles in a gun control demonstration at the statehouse in Nashville on April 6.

Tennessee State Rep. Gloria Johnson said racism absolutely played a factor in the removal last week of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson.

Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor with Pearson and Jones calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn. Johnson, a White woman and a fellow Democrat, survived the vote in the GOP-dominated chamber while Pearson and Jones did not.

Johnson said racism in the legislature is “blatant, quite frankly,” although her Republican colleagues have insisted race didn’t play a role in the legislators’ expulsions.

Tennessee state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones raise their hands after being expelled from their seats in Nashville on April 6.

Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote last week. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber.

All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” after they led a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

In the wake of a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, Jones said he and other lawmakers were blocked from raising the issue of gun violence on the House floor, with their microphones being cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to WSMV.

According to the expulsion resolutions, Jones, Pearson and Johnson “began shouting without recognition” during their protest and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives.” Video showed the trio using a bullhorn.

Republican leaders in the chamber condemned the lawmakers’ actions and moved quickly to remove their committee assignments and schedule a vote for their expulsion. Jones’ and Pearson’s pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol that the vacant seats needed to be filled.

However, the Nashville Metropolitan Council unanimously voted Monday to reinstate Jones in the interim until an election is held. And Jones returned to his seat in the legislature hours later.