by Don Mooney
Memphis, Tenn—Tennessee a state known for waving the GOP red flag, who until recently voted to remove slavery as a form of punishment from its constitution, is back in the national spotlight. Tennessee’s Republican supermajority is poised to poised to exact direct political retribution and take the unprecedented move of expelling three Democrats(Tennessee Three) as punishment for violating House decorum rules by using a bullhorn on the House floor to lead a protest calling for gun reform.
The expulsion vote, along with the deadly Covenant shooting and subsequent demonstrations, has thrust Tennessee and its politics onto the national stage, drawing attention from Republicans and some of the highest-ranking Democrats in the country.
House members are expected to vote Thursday to remove Reps. Gloria Johnson, D-KNoxville, Justin Jones,D-Nashville and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis from elected office after the trio brought the chamber to a halt for nearly an hour last week by speaking out of order following the deadly shooting at Covenant School-House Speaker Cameron Sexton later likened to an insurrection. An insurrection in which no demonstrators broke into the Capitol, no one was arrested or injured, and no property was damaged.
Unprecedented response for breaking decorum of house rules. Only two house members have been expelled from the chamber since the 1800s, both after either criminal charges or sexual misconduct allegations. Both of those times, in 1980 and 2016, followed special committee inquiries and were bipartisan votes.
House Republicans filed resolutions Monday to expel the three members who interrupted legislative business, triggering a removal process expected to take place this Thursday. The trio will have a chance to defend their actions, but expulsion is likely under the Republican supermajority in the House.
But legislative business in the House was brought to a halt when three elected Democratic representatives stood at the podium with a bullhorn to lead protestors in the galleries in calls for gun reform.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, compared the events on March 30 to “at least equivalent, maybe worse” than the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which left a protestor dead, many police officers injured and millions of dollars of property damaged. Backtracking his comments, Sexton said it was not his intent to conflate the protesters at the Capitol with the three lawmakers.
Bruce Oppenheimer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, told The Tennessean that typically an ethics committee investigation occurs before an expulsion vote.
Compared with others who have been ousted from the legislature, Oppenheimer said the decorum violation “seems modest, almost to the point of being trivial.”
“Normally, expulsion from a legislature is an extreme sanction that involves indictment and conviction of a crime or a severe ethical violation,” Oppenheimer said. “Even when an ethical violation is incurred, lesser penalties of a reprimand or censure would be assessed in most cases.”
It’s still possible that expulsion will not happen on Thursday — Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, asked colleagues to back down and pray about the vote before session on Thursday
“Every one of us, whether you were in the scuffle or whether you were part of creating martyrs out of other members — this is not us,” Parkinson said. “We didn’t look like leaders a few minutes ago. We’re bigger than that. We’re better than that.”