Justin J. Pearson gestures after a vote for his reinstatement by the Shelby County Commission, days after the Republican majority Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel him and Rep. Justin Jones for their roles in a gun control demonstration on the statehouse floor, in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S., on Wednesday.
MEMPHIS, Tennessee--Local government officials in Memphis, Tennessee, voted on Wednesday 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 last week, Republicans who control the state House of Representatives voted to kick out Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two Black men in their late 20s who had recently joined the legislature, over their rule-breaking peaceful protest on the floor on March 30. Jones has already been sworn back in after councilors 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, voted in favour of doing the same for Pearson at a special meeting in Memphis, where Pearson's district is located. Seven of the board's 13 councilors were present for the meeting, and all seven voted in favour of Pearson's return. "You can't expel hope," Pearson said at the meeting after the vote. "You can't expel justice. You can't expel our voice." He is expected to return to the State Capitol in Nashville on Thursday to be sworn back in. In announcing the meeting, Mickell Lowery, the board's chairman and a Democrat, had 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 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 narrowly escaped also being expelled for breaching House decorum rules. 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. Democrats in the U.S. Senate have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the expelled lawmakers' constitutional rights were violated.
