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

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:

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 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 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."

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.

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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.