Nashville Council votes to reinstate the ousted MK

Nashville, Tennessee – Nashville officials are preparing to vote Monday to reinstate a Black Democratic lawmaker who was expelled by fellow Republicans for protesting gun control on the floor of the Tennessee House after a fatal school shooting — essentially, bringing him back after a long weekend.

The Nashville Metro Council called a meeting to address the vacancy left by the firing of former Rep. Justin Jones on Thursday. Several council members have commented publicly that they want to return Jones to the State House. The vote will take place as state representatives hold their sessions on the first floor since the expulsion vote last week.

In the meantime, fired Memphis representative Justin Pearson could be reappointed at a Wednesday meeting of the Shelby County Commission.

Special elections for the seats, which have yet to be decided, will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson said they want to be reappointed and plan to run in a special election.

Meanwhile, it’s not clear in the State House how House Republicans will respond to seeing the lawmakers they fired go straight back. House Speaker Cameron Sexton said lawmakers will go through the process if or when they are reappointed.

The expulsions made Tennessee a new front in the battle for the future of American democracy, while thrusting ousted lawmakers into the national spotlight. Jones and Pearson soon attracted notable supporters. President Joe Biden spoke with them and Vice President Kamala Harris visited them in Nashville.

Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a third Democrat who was targeted for expulsion, also received national attention. Johnson, who is white, escaped expulsion by one vote. Republican lawmakers justified splitting their votes by saying Johnson had less of a role in the protest — she didn’t speak into a megaphone, for example.

The protesting lawmakers had called on Republicans to pass some kind of gun control legislation in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that left six people dead, including three young children and three adults who worked at the school. The police killed the shooter.

Johnson also suggested that race was more likely a factor in why Jones and Pearson were ousted but not her, telling reporters that it “might have something to do with the color of our skin”.

GOP leaders said the measures — which have been used only a handful of times since the Civil War — had nothing to do with race, and were instead necessary to avoid setting a precedent in which lawmakers disrupting House proceedings through protest would be tolerated.