What happened in Tennessee: How 2 black lawmakers were expelled by the Republican supermajority in the state House of Representatives

A third Democrat, Representative Gloria Johnson, who had also joined the demonstration, narrowly avoided the expulsion. Together, the three Democrats are being called the “Tennessee Three”.

Soon after being reinstated, Jones marched to the state Capitol and issued a statement. He said, “To the people of Tennessee, I stand with you. We will continue to be your voice here. And no expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but it will only galvanise and strengthen our movement. And we will continue to show up in the people’s House.”

The action against the two Democratic leaders drew widespread condemnation from across the United States. Banishing a member from the state House is rare in the history of Tennessee. The incident also demonstrated the increasingly deep political divide between the Democrats and the Republicans, with the latter accused of using their supermajority in red states such as Tennessee to silence their opponents, trying to make it harder to cast ballots and challenging the integrity of the election process.

What happened in the Tennessee House?

The incident was a fallout of the March 27 shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, the capital of Tennessee state, in which six individuals were killed, including three nine-year-old children.

The incident triggered demands — similar to the ones that are seen after almost all instances of gun violence in the country — for tightening of laws to restrict access to lethal weapons, along with the familiar determined pushback from the gun lobby and Republican leaders, who vowed to increase security in the schools of the state, instead.

As the protests intensified, hundreds of people marching to the Tennessee House of Representatives to press their demand for greater gun control. The demonstrations were notably joined by Jones, Pearson and Johnson.

On March 30, as the protesters filled the galleries of the House, the three Democratic lawmakers approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and urged their colleagues to pass gun control legislation, the AP reported. They also raised slogans like “no action, no peace”.

The disruption didn’t sit well with the Republic leadership, and it soon filed a resolution to expel the three lawmakers from their seats in the state legislature for “disorderly behaviour”.

On April 6, the House, which consists of 75 Republicans and 23 Democrats, voted 72-25 to expel Jones and 69-26 to remove Pearson. Johnson, a white woman, was spared by a one-vote margin.

The expulsions drew heat from Democratic leaders from all the corners of the country. President Joe Biden called them “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent”. As both lawmakers were African American, many Democrats, including Johnson, who escaped expulsion, suggested that race was a factor in the decision of the House Republican supermajority.

Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who had voted to expel all three Democrats, however, denied that race was a factor. Majority Leader William Lamberth, said, “Our members literally didn’t look at the ethnicity of the members up for expulsion.” Lamberth alleged that Jones and Pearson were “trying to incite a riot last week, while Johnson was more subdued”, the AP reported.

Is such action rare and “unprecedented”, as President Biden said?

House members have been expelled on only three previous occasions in Tennessee.

In 1866, six lawmakers were dismissed for blocking an amendment. In 1980, a House member was expelled for allegedly seeking bribes. And in 2016, one of the members was accused of sexual misconduct.

In India, where spirited protests by elected members in the House is routine — rushing to the well and raising slogans, as the Tennessee Three did, happens all the time, even though the use of a megaphone or bullhorn is not common — the presiding officer can punish unruly behaviour by suspending the MP or MLA.

The general principle is that it is the role and duty of the presiding officer — Speaker of Lok Sabha and Chairman of Rajya Sabha — to maintain order so that the House can function smoothly, and to ensure that proceedings are conducted in the proper manner, presiding officers can compel an unruly member to withdraw from the House. Suspensions have become fairly common in recent years, and opposition MPs have often complained of being unfairly targeted.

The expulsion or disqualification of an MP can, however, take place only under the provisions of Article 102 of the Indian Constitution.

This provision says: “A person shall be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of either House of Parliament — (a) if he holds any office of profit under the Government of India or the Government of any State, other than an office declared by Parliament by law not to disqualify its holder; (b) if he is of unsound mind and stands so declared by a competent court; (c) if he is an undischarged insolvent; (d) if he is not a citizen of India, or has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of a foreign State, or is under any acknowledgment of allegiance or adherence to a foreign State; (e) if he is so disqualified by or under any law made by Parliament.”

Article 102(1)(e) was applicable in the case of Rahul Gandhi recently, when Section 8(3) of The Representation of the People Act, 1951 — a “law made by Parliament” — was triggered by his conviction and sentencing for two years by a court in Surat.

Section 8(3) of The RP Act says: “A person convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years shall be disqualified from the date of such conviction and shall continue to be disqualified for a further period of six years since his release.”

Who are the Tennessee Three?

While Jones, 27, and Pearson, 29, have been recently elected, Johnson, 60, entered the House in 2012. Jones has been an activist and a community organiser who has been arrested more than a dozen times, for non-violent protests, The Washington Post reported.

One of these arrests took place after Jones had participated in a 62-day sit-in outside the Tennessee Capitol to protest the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was killed in the custody of police in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Pearson is an environmental campaigner who grabbed headlines in February this year for wearing a dashiki — a colourful garment that covers the top half of the body, worn mostly in West Africa — to the House floor for his swearing-in ceremony. He was widely criticised for not being professional.

Johnson is a former teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, who lost a student to gun violence. She worked as a community organiser during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Under what circumstances was Justin Jones reinstated?

Jones, who represents parts of Nashville in the House, was reinstated after the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted to return him to the state legislature.

CNN reported that state law gives local legislative bodies the power to appoint interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election takes place. “The 36-0 vote to return Jones to his seat followed a vote to suspend a procedural rule that prevents an individual from being nominated and appointed to the seat in the same meeting,” the report said.