Senators encourage Justice Department to probe the Tennessee expulsions as a civil rights violation

The Washington Post reports that the next step in the war between Democrats and Republicans in Tennessee is U.S. senators encouraging the Justice Department to probe the matter for civil rights violations.

Last week, GOP lawmakers in the state's Assembly voted on expelling three Democrats, but the only two removed were Black men.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) sent a letter Wednesday calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “use all available legal authorities” toinvestigate whether any federal laws were violated. They urged him to “take all steps necessary to uphold the democratic integrity of our nation’s legislative bodies.”

State House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) alleged that the Democrats were inciting violence when they spoke out to the audience in the gallery demanding action on gun safety.

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One of the men, state Rep. Justin Jones (Nashville), has already been reinstated by his city council, which voted unanimously to make him the interim lawmaker until a special election can be held. The Memphis council is set to vote on former state Rep. Justin Pearson on Wednesday.

Sexton had previously claimed that if the men were reinstated, he'd kill all funding to both Nashville and Memphis.

In an op-ed for The New York Times, Pearson explained, "our people are traumatized. They want action" after the mass shooting in Nashville that left nine dead. On May 26, 2021, Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the "Tennessee Second Amendment Sanctuary" law that stops any city or county in the state from enforcing laws regulating the Second Amendment.

He noted that many protesters that came to the state Capitol held signs asking, "Am I next?

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"We were traumatized, too. We wanted action, too. And the difference was — it was literally our job to act," Pearson wrote. "Yet, Republican legislators refuse to take meaningful action. Instead, some have averted their eyes and hurried into the chamber, walking through hundreds of mourning protesters to discuss a bill to further expand gun rights by allowing teachers to carry weapons on campus. But many of us did not. We stopped and embraced traumatized children, parents and elders. We prayed. We protested."

He went on to explain that the expulsion from the speaker silenced not just his voice but the 135,000 citizens in the districts of both Jones and Pearson. Had they expelled Rep. Gloria Johnson too, it would have totaled over 200,000 citizens without representation.

"Since the Covenant School shooting, the Republican supermajority in the State House has done little but advance a bill that would allow teachers to carry guns in school and propose a $140 million budget increase to pay for the presence of armed guards in public schools, further militarizing them without adequate evidence that this makes schools safer," wrote Pearson.

In their letter, Warnock and Schumer praised the state representatives for standing up for nonviolent protest and questioned why the Speaker would single them out with such significant and disproportionate punishment over other representatives that remained after breaking the law.

“We do not believe that breaking decorum is alone sufficient cause for employing the most draconian of consequences to duly-elected lawmakers,” the senators said. “This is un-democratic, un-American, and unacceptable, and the U.S. Department of Justice should investigate whether it was also unlawful or unconstitutional.”