*Tennessee House Republicans passed a measure on Monday to prevent expelled lawmakers from being reappointed to office.
Despite constitutional concerns, lawmakers voted 69-22 in favor of House Bill 2716, preventing local legislative bodies from reinstating former members to office following expulsion, Tennessee Outlook reports.
“Our framers did not intend that someone expelled from this House would be considered replacing themselves,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Johnny Garrett, R-Goodlettsville.
Garrett presided over the 2023 House hearing where Republican lawmakers voted to expel Reps. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, and Justin Jones, D-Nashville (both of whom are Black), for their leadership in a gun violence protest on the floor. “Less than a week later, the Metro Nashville Council and Shelby County Commission voted to return Jones and Pearson to the Legislature, and they won special elections over the summer,” the Tennessee Outlook writes.
“The Republican-led supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly sought to have a political lynching of three of its members because we spoke out of turn against the status quo of the government, after the tragic deaths of six people in the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville,” Pearson said last year at an Easter Sunday service at The Church of the River in Memphis, per CNN.
In a statement, Shelby County Commission Chairman Mickell Lowery said Pearson’s expulsion “was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods.”
“I am certain that the leaders in the State Capitol understand the importance of this action on behalf of the affected citizens here in Shelby County, Tennessee and that we stand ready to work in concert with them to assist with only positive outcomes going forward,” Lowery added.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jason Powell called House Bill 2716 “unconstitutional.”
“My community is sick and tired of being pushed around by people who don’t respect the constitution,” Powell added, according to the Tennessee Outlook.
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