Breaking news: Justin Pearson, one of two Black Democratic lawmakers expelled by Republican state representatives for leading a gun-control protest on the Tennessee House floor, was reappointed to office Wednesday.
to return the other expelled lawmaker, Justin Jones, to the statehouse. Their ejection from the legislature, where Republicans hold a supermajority, followed a mass killing at a Nashville school that ignited grief and demonstrations in the capital and spurred Pearson, Jones and a third Democrat to protest in the House chamber.Pearson was considered less certain in Shelby County, where the 13-member commission includes four Republicans. Only seven members were present for the vote.
In a statement ahead of the vote to reinstate Jones, House Majority Leader William Lamberth and Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison said they would “welcome” Jones and Pearson back to the chamber if they were reappointed, but advised them to “follow the rules of the house as well as state law.”
The expulsions of the two Black lawmakers temporarily more than 130,000 residents of Democratic-leaning Memphis and Nashville with no political representation in the House and threatened toin the state. The third Democrat who stood with Pearson and Jones as they used a bullhorn to lead protesters in the gallery — Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White — escaped expulsion by one vote, and she has suggested that her race may have been the reason she was spared.
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