A democratically elected legislator who was evicted from the Tennessee state legislature last week has been reappointed to fill his vacant seat on an interim basis.
On Monday, the Metro Nashville Council voted to reinstate Justin Jones, the first state representative ever to be removed from the legislature for violating the chamber’s rules on decorum without facing an investigation or charges of serious misconduct.
“I want to welcome the people back to the people’s house. I want to welcome democracy back to the people’s house,” Jones said upon his return to the floor of the House of Representatives on Monday.
His April 6 eviction was quickly followed by that of Justin Pearson, a fellow Democrat representing parts of Memphis. A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, narrowly escaped eviction by a single vote.
Johnson is white. Pearson and Jones are black, leading to allegations of racial and partisan bias in the heavily Republican legislature.
Justin Jones leaves the Historic Metro Courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, after being reinstated as a state representative (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
“The mood this afternoon is unprecedented,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said Monday.
“But so was the action taken to oust members of the legislature. Voters in District 52 chose Justin Jones as their vote in the state House, and that vote was taken away last week. So let’s give them back their voice.”
He called on the board to reinstate Jones unanimously, and the board followed suit by a vote of 36 to zero.
Jones, Pearson and Johnson were all charged with decency after leading a protest on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 30 following a deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School, a private institution offering education from kindergarten through sixth grade.
That shooting killed three 9-year-olds and three adults. The protest called for more gun control in the aftermath of the shooting, and Jones and Pearson used a megaphone to be heard during the demonstration.
The decision to evict the two black lawmakers, both 28, has drawn national attention to the Tennessee legislature, with critics calling the evictions anti-democratic.
“The Council followed the law,” the Tennessee Democratic Party wrote on social media, applauding Monday’s vote of 36 to 0. “It’s time for the Republican chairman to do the same and swear him back in the State House.”
Justin Jones will return to the Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday following his eviction for leading a gun control protest (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
By nominating Jones to return to the seat he was evicted from Monday, Nashville City Council member Delishia Porterfield denounced the state legislature for launching “a blatant attack on our democracy.”
“With this vote, we are sending a strong message to our state government and to the entire country that we will not tolerate threats to our democracy,” Porterfield said.
Together, Jones and Pearson represented nearly 140,000 voters as elected legislators for Districts 52 and 86, respectively.
Pearson celebrated his colleague’s recovery on Monday with a speech that quoted Bible texts.
“Justice shall flow down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. It will happen,” Pearson told a crowd of supporters.
“You could try to silence it. You could try removing it. But the power of the people will not be stopped. The power of the people will not be stopped. Because that’s what democracy looks like.”
Justin Pearson, seen at an Easter Sunday service on April 9, was also ousted from his legislature (Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)
Pearson also hopes to return to the legislature as the Shelby County Board of Commissioners meets this Wednesday to consider his reinstatement.
“It has been the honor of my life to serve District 86 as a representative of the State House. I want nothing more than to serve again,” Pearson tweeted Monday.
Both he and Jones have indicated they will run in the upcoming special election to permanently fill the seats left open by their evictions. Tennessee counties’ legislatures are empowered to appoint temporary representatives when seats become vacant.
Protesters rallied for the vote on Monday to show their support for Jones, waving placards and chanting “Whose house? Our house!” and “No Justin, no peace”, a play on the civil rights slogan “No justice, no peace”.
The administration of US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had also spoken out against the evictions of Jones and Pearson. Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Tennessee on Friday to meet lawmakers, and Biden called the “Tennessee Three” to invite them to the White House later that day.
Prior to the April 6 vote to evict Pearson and Jones, the Tennessee legislature had used its power to evict members only three times.
The first was in 1866, in the aftermath of the Civil War, when lawmakers tried to block a constitutional amendment that would grant citizenship to all people born in the US, regardless of race, and give them equal protection under the law.
The second time was in 1980, when a state representative took a bribe. And the third time came in 2016, when a lawmaker was charged with sexual harassment.
For protesting on the House floor, Jones and Pearson were charged with disrupting proceedings and bringing “disorder and dishonor” to the room. They were driven out along party lines, by a vote of 72 to 25 and 69 to 26 respectively.
