By Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) – Local officials will meet in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday to decide whether to return the second of two Democratic state lawmakers who were expelled last week for protesting gun violence on the chamber floor.
In a rare rebuke, Republicans who control the state House of Representatives voted to kick out Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two Black men who had recently joined the legislature, over their rule-breaking protest on the House floor on March 30.
Jones has already been sworn back in after councillors in Nashville, where his district is located, voted unanimously on Monday to restore him on an interim basis until a special election can be held for the remainder of the two-year term.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, where Democrats hold a supermajority, will vote on doing the same for Pearson at a special meeting in Memphis, where Pearson’s district is.
In announcing the meeting, Mickell Lowery, the board’s chairman and a Democrat, called the expulsions “unfortunate.”
“I believe the expulsion of State Representative Justin Pearson was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods,” Lowery said in a statement.
Jones and Pearson helped lead the extraordinary demonstration on March 30 in the well of the House floor, disrupting a legislative session, along with Representative Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a fellow Democrat. They were supported by angry Nashville residents outraged by a mass shooting at a school in the city earlier in the week in which a former student killed three 9-year-olds and three staff members.
Johnson, who unlike Jones and Pearson did not use a megaphone during the protest, narrowly escaped also being expelled. She told reporters after the votes that she believed she survived because she is white, and all three have called the expulsions anti-democratic.
The expulsions drew national attention to Jones and Pearson, including a visit last week by Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, to show support, and animated many voters in the Democrat-leaning cities they represent in a largely Republican-favoring state.
Pearson has called for supporters to join him in a march from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to the meeting of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday afternoon.
Tennessee’s House Republicans, who have a supermajority, have said this week they will “welcome” back any expelled state lawmakers returned by county-level governments, so long as those members follow the legislature’s rules.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
