Tennessee’s Republican-led House voted Thursday to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers who recently led a raucous protest from the House floor calling for gun control reforms.

Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, were both removed from the House by party vote, in a disciplinary measure used only twice since the 1800s. The results were 72-25 and 69-26, respectively. They represent a combined constituency of approximately 130,000 people.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who represents approximately 70,000 Tennesseans, narrowly avoided the same fate with a vote of 65 to 30.

Following the failed vote, reporters asked Johnson if she thought there was a reason she got a different result. “I’ll respond to your question,” she said. “It could be because of the colour of our skin.”

Jones and Pearson are both black, while Johnson is white.

The expelled lawmakers admitted they violated decorum by walking on the floor, known as the well, and speaking without being formally recognised.

Republicans called the trio’s actions an insurgency.

The trio, dubbed “The Tennessee Three” by supporters, have already been removed from committee assignments.

What occurred on Thursday?

Soon after 1 p.m. local time, lawmakers began discussing the possibility of expelling three of their colleagues. Throughout the proceedings, loud protests could be heard from the chamber’s floor.

Tennessee’s Republican-led House voted Thursday to expel two of three Democratic lawmakers who recently led a raucous protest from the House floor calling for gun control reforms.

Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, were both removed from the House by party vote, in a disciplinary measure used only twice since the 1800s. The results were 72-25 and 69-26, respectively. They represent a combined constituency of approximately 130,000 people.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who represents approximately 70,000 Tennesseans, narrowly avoided the same fate with a vote of 65 to 30.

Following the failed vote, reporters asked Johnson if she thought there was a reason she got a different result. “I’ll respond to your question,” she said. “It could be because of the colour of our skin.”

Jones and Pearson are both black, while Johnson is white.

The expelled lawmakers admitted they violated decorum by walking on the floor, known as the well, and speaking without being formally recognised.

Johnson, Pearson, and Jones were each given 20 minutes to speak on their own behalf, including time for their attorneys.

Jones was the first of the three to address the chamber, explaining his actions on the floor’s well on March 30.

“The rest of the world is watching Tennessee,” he said. “What is happening here today is a democratic farce.”

He referred to the majority Republican membership, many of whom have stated their willingness to vote to expel the members, as a “lynch mob” eager to exact the “ultimate punishment” on himself, Johnson, and Pearson.

“I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I wasn’t there to represent myself,” Jones explained. “I was campaigning for those young people, many of whom are unable to vote. Many of whom are denied the right to vote. But all of them are terrified by the ongoing trend of mass shootings in our state and across the country.”

Jones also emphasised how rare it is for the House or Senate to take such drastic action against a sitting, elected representative.

“It’s not a temple. This is supposed to be a place where we wrestle for our democracy and wrestle ideas “Jones went on to say.

Former Rep. John Mark Windle, an attorney for Johnson, called the resolution a “outright lie” and a “outright distortion of her conduct.”

Windle contended that, contrary to the motion for her removal from the House, Johnson never shouted, pounded the podium, or displayed a sign with a political statement while she was in the well last week, all of which would be in violation of House rules.

Windle stated that expulsion is reserved for those who take bribes, commit sexual offences, or are felons.

“She is not a felon, a misdemeanour, a sex offender, the subject of a federal grand jury investigation, she has never had a single ethics violation… simply put, she has never broken the public trust,” he stated.

In response to a question from a Republican lawmaker, Johnson denied shouting from the floor.

“I never yelled,” she said, adding that she “did not speak in a louder voice than any other member on this floor.”

“I may have broken a rule by approaching the well,” she later added, “but much of what is in this document is false.”

Johnson also discussed her experience as a teacher during the 2008 school shooting at a Knoxville high school. Johnson, who is now retired, said she still spends a lot of time on school campuses and jumps whenever she hears the sound of a police siren or an ambulance.

“Every time because you just can’t get that out of your head,” she explained.

Rep. Justin Pearson attacked the allegations against him in a multi-pronged attack.

Republicans called the trio’s actions an insurgency.

The trio, dubbed “The Tennessee Three” by supporters, have already been removed from committee assignments.

Here’s some more context and how we got here. (You can also keep up with updates from member station WPLN.)

What occurred on Thursday?

Soon after 1 p.m. local time, lawmakers began discussing the possibility of expelling three of their colleagues. Throughout the proceedings, loud protests could be heard from the chamber’s floor.

First, he claimed that as a freshman representative, he was not informed of all House rules and when and how they apply.

“I was told we were crowding around the clerk’s desk,” he explained, referring to the language in the motion against him and his colleagues. “And, to be honest, I just realised they were talking about this desk rather than the one up there,” he said, pointing to the speaker’s desk.

He went on to say: “There are many things in these resolutions that appear to assume a great deal of knowledge about what I am supposed to know. What we are supposed to know in the absence of actual facts about what we have been told.”

Pearson also denied that his and the others’ protest disrupted the day’s proceedings.

“It would not have been possible for me to disrupt proceedings between 10:50 and 11:42. We were on break “He stated.

“None of us thought we were doing anything that deserved expulsion from the House,” he explained, adding that House rules require a member who violates decorum rules to face “censure” rather than “expulsion.”

Earlier in the proceedings, the House majority whip, Rep. Johnny Garrett, played a seven-minute video of events from that day, over the objections of Democrats, including Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., D-Memphis, who spoke out against what he called a “stacked deal” and a “ambush.”

The video was a compilation of footage from that day and later, and Democrats claimed that because it included footage shot on the House floor, whoever took the footage had likely violated House rules.

Following the Nashville school shooting, there was a House protest.
The expulsion vote came one week after Reps. Johnson, Jones, and Pearson led chants of demonstrators in the House gallery with a loudhailer.

Days earlier, a 28-year-old assailant shot and killed six people at a Nashville elementary school, prompting crowds of students and parents to lobby lawmakers for new restrictions.

Jones, Pearson, and Johnson chastised Republican leaders for failing to respond to the call for gun control in the aftermath of the U.S. mass-shooting crisis. They claimed they did so to amplify the voices of protesters and constituents.

Hundreds of people protested the vote and called for gun control at the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday, according to WPLN’s Lexi Marshall.

What are the three legislators saying?

Prior to the vote, Jones, Pearson, and Johnson stated that if they were expelled, over 200,000 Tennesseans would lose the representatives they had lawfully elected last fall.

“In Tennessee, we are losing our democracy,” Pearson told WPLN. “This is yet another example of democracy eroding because we advocated for gun reform. Because we stood up for people and children who will never become state legislators, never graduate from high school, never get involved, and will never be able to see or protest for their own lives because they were killed by gun violence.”

“This was not an insurgency,” Johnson said to WPLN. “We’ve had floor skirmishes that took this long to resolve, and there were never any consequences.”

On CNN, Jones claimed that Republicans are using authoritarian tactics to silence the opposition. “It’s extremely concerning, and it represents a clear and present danger to democracy throughout this country,” Jones said. “That should worry us all.”

Prioritizing punishing lawmakers over a procedural breach after a school shooting is “morally insane,” according to Jones.

What do Republicans have to say?

Republicans immediately chastised the three lawmakers for allegedly disrupting order and breaking procedural rules in the chamber for nearly an hour.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the incident to what happened on January 6: “What they did today was equivalent, if not worse, depending on how you look at it, to staging an insurgency in the State Capitol,” he said.

Sexton also mentioned that Jones and Johnson had previously been “very vocal about Jan. 6 and what that was in Washington, D.C.”

The three nearly identical resolutions to expel Jones, Johnson, and Pearson allege disorderly conduct that “reflects negatively on the integrity and dignity of the House.”

What are the expulsion rules in the House?

Article II, Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution empowers the House to “punish its members for disorderly behaviour” and expel members with a two-thirds majority vote.

The seats of Jones and Pearson will become vacant. Because the general election in 2024 is more than a year away, their districts will hold special elections to fill the vacancies. County commissions of representatives may also appoint an interim lawmaker to serve until a special election is held.

Expelled representatives can reclaim their seats by being appointed by the commission or running again. The state constitution also states that a lawmaker cannot be expelled for the same offence a second time.

Who else has been kicked out?

In 2016, state Rep. Jeremy Durham was expelled for “disorderly behaviour” — Durham was facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct at the time.

Prior to Durham, the most recent expelled representative was Rep. Robert Fisher, who was voted out of the chamber in 1980 after being convicted of seeking a bribe in exchange for sabotaging legislation.

“Where does politeness end and a bribe begin?” Fisher inquired at the time.

Both votes to kick Durham and Fisher out were overwhelmingly bipartisan.

The Tennessee Senate voted to remove Sen. Katrina Robinson in early 2022 after she was convicted of wire fraud — “the first time the chamber has removed a senator since at least the Civil War,” according to the Associated Press.

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