Senate Democrats asked the Justice Department to investigate the expulsions of two Tennessee Democratic state lawmakers after they disrupted a legislative session protesting for stricter gun control laws.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) wrote a letter asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to “use all available legal authorities” to determine whether the expulsions violate federal statutes and “take all steps necessary to uphold the democratic integrity of our nation’s legislative bodies.”
TENNESSEE THREE: NASHVILLE CITY COUNCIL VOTES UNANIMOUSLY TO REINSTATE EXPELLED STATE LAWMAKER
The senators argued that the removals may have violated the state representatives’ First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly after state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, along with state Rep. Gloria Johnson, went to the podium with a megaphone and joined hundreds of protesters in calling for gun reform legislation following a mass shooting at a Christian school that claimed the lives of three children and three adults.
Johnson, a white Democrat who also participated in the demonstration, survived her expulsion vote. Jones and Pearson, black Democrats, were expelled for participating in “disorderly behavior,” but Republican state Rep. Lowell Russell said Johnson “did not participate to the extent that Jones and Pearson did.”
This is the first response to the situation despite several Democratic leaders speaking out against the expulsions of Jones and Pearson. They were expelled last Thursday, with the Nashville Metropolitan Council voting to reinstate Jones to the state House on Monday.
Schumer and Warnock praised Jones and Pearson for “courageously participating in nonviolent demonstrations” that “challenged procedural rules.”
“We do not believe that breaking decorum is alone sufficient cause for employing the most draconian of consequences to duly-elected lawmakers,” the senators wrote in the letter via the Washington Post. “This is un-democratic, un-American, and unacceptable, and the U.S. Department of Justice should investigate whether it was also unlawful or unconstitutional.”
The letter from Schumer and Warnock cites the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1966 ruling in Bond v. Floyd. In that case, the court found that the Georgia House of Representatives’s refusal to seat a black lawmaker, Julian Bond, over his stance on the Vietnam War was unconstitutional. The senators are using this as a precedent to draw from in arguing that the expulsions in Tennessee were unlawful.
However, there are few precedents from the senators to draw from, which could make a Justice Department investigation difficult. Also, with local city councils taking action to restore their members, it is possible there will not be much for the federal administration to do.
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“I can imagine a scenario in which the two legislators bring cases citing constitutional claims, but I think that those claims turn upon these really difficult questions of fact about the reasons for the expulsion,” Aziz Huq, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, told the Washington Post.
“I think those cases would be challenging to win, and I don’t see any immediate payoff from those cases for these legislators given one’s been reinstated and the other one is likely to be reinstated,” Huq said.
