Democrats against democracy in Tennessee
Byron York
DEMOCRATS AGAINST DEMOCRACY IN TENNESSEE. There was a furor among politicos when Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Democratic members for using a bullhorn to hijack and then occupy the House floor amid a noisy protest by anti-gun demonstrators. The March 30 occupation brought the House to a standstill as the members whipped up protesters in the House gallery calling for gun control in light of the recent Covenant School shooting. It took nearly an hour for order to be restored and the House to resume its session.
When it was all over, the GOP, with an overwhelming 75-24 majority in the House, proposed a resolution of expulsion, gave the accused members a chance to make their case, and then voted them out.
Republicans, of course, had the authority to do what they did. The Tennessee Constitution says, “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.” That’s pretty clear. It also happens to be taken word for word from the U.S. Constitution, which says of Congress, “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”
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But Democrats immediately accused the GOP of racism. This was their case: There were originally three Democratic House members who took part in the takeover and occupation: state Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson. Jones and Pearson are black, and Johnson is white. Jones and Pearson were expelled, and Johnson was not. Therefore, Republican racism.
The expulsion votes were 72 to 25 for Jones, the most vocal and confrontational of the group and the one who sneaked the bullhorn onto the House floor; 69 to 26 for Pearson, who was nearly as vocal as Jones; and 65 to 30 for Johnson, who played a far less active role in the takeover and occupation than Jones and Pearson. Since a two-thirds vote, 66 votes, was required for expulsion and only 65 voted to expel Johnson, she was allowed to stay in the House, saved by a single vote.
The racism, as Democrats allege, is that 72 and 69 Republicans voted to expel Jones and Pearson, respectively, while only 65 Republicans voted to expel Johnson. Republicans obviously made some distinctions between the cases. More voted to expel Jones than Pearson, and more voted to expel Pearson than Johnson. Perhaps to some neutral observers, that would seem more like judgment than racism, but Democrats, as they often do, have rallied behind the racism allegation.
Now, some Democrats in Washington want the Justice Department to get involved. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and four other Democrats ask the nation’s top law enforcement department to investigate “whether any violations of the United States Constitution or federal civil rights laws have occurred, and to take all steps necessary to uphold the democratic integrity of our nation’s legislative bodies.”
Schumer claimed Jones and Pearson “courageously” participated in a “deeply moving expression of democratic participation” in line with “America’s long tradition of peaceful, non-violent protest, perfected during the struggles and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement.” In so doing, they “challenged procedural rules governing decorum and good behavior.”
Bringing the House to a standstill was justified, Schumer wrote, because “we believe the repeated and preventable slaughter of our children should frustrate and disrupt decorum because this horrifying pattern must never be accepted as business as usual.”
Schumer then called for more public discussion and debate on the question of gun control. Somewhat ironically, he noted that “our democracy only works when Americans can have that debate in our newspapers, town squares, and most important, our halls of government.” He did not note that Jones and Pearson used the bullhorn to stop debate in the House. At the time, lawmakers were discussing a different topic, education, and Jones and Pearson felt the House should stop what it was doing and discuss the topic Jones and Pearson wanted to discuss. So they took up the bullhorn and took over the House. Is that what Schumer meant when he talked about having “debate … in our halls of government”?
And when members use a bullhorn to hijack debate in the halls of government and are then punished for it, Schumer’s reaction is to call for the Justice Department to investigate the expulsion rather than the obstruction of the House’s business on March 30. Now, it is entirely possible that expulsion was too drastic a penalty. Perhaps Jones and Pearson should have been censured instead, although it is not clear any Democrats would have supported that, either. But there is simply no doubt that Tennessee House Republicans acted in accord with the state’s constitution and in the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, which also gives houses of Congress the authority to write their own rules and expel members.
Of course, now it’s moot because local councils in Nashville and Memphis quickly voted to return both Jones and Pearson to the House. But if Schumer has his way, the incident will live on in the form of a new Justice Department investigation.
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