Expelled Tennessee House Democrat Justin Jones Just Got His Job Back

Jones was voted back into office by the Nashville Metropolitan Council after he was expelled for protesting for gun control in the House chamber.
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A Tennessee state representative expelled by his GOP colleagues for protesting for gun control was just voted back into office.

The Nashville Metropolitan Council voted 36-0 in favor of reinstating Rep. Justin Jones on Monday. Jones was one of two House Democrats expelled by the GOP supermajority for joining protesters ― many of them children ― who chanted for gun control in the House chamber following a school shooting that left three kids and three adults dead last month.

Twenty-three members of the Metropolitan Council previously vowed to send Jones back to the House after he was expelled Thursday.

“Voters in District 52 elected Justin Jones to be their voice at the statehouse, and that voice was taken away this past week. So let’s give them their voice back. I call on this body to vote unanimously, right now, to do just that,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper (D) said at the meeting.

Jones was expelled along with fellow Democratic Rep. Justin Pearson for what Republican lawmakers called in a resolution “disorderly behavior” that “knowingly and intentionally” brought “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” when they protested in the House chamber.

Former Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, raises his fist on the floor of the House chamber as he walks to his desk to collect his belongings after being expelled from the legislature on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Former Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, raises his fist on the floor of the House chamber as he walks to his desk to collect his belongings after being expelled from the legislature on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee.
AP Photo/George Walker IV

Both Pearson and Jones are Black. Rep. Gloria Johnson, who also protested but avoided expulsion by just one vote, is white.

“What we see today is just a spectacle,” Jones said in the House chamber before his expulsion last week. “What we see today is a lynch mob assembled not to lynch me, but our democratic process.”

Council Member Burkley Allen told NBC News that the expulsions set “a terrible precedent.”

“They removed the voice from 140,000 people who voted for them,” Allen said Friday. “It’s a terrible precedent to set that we disagree with you, and you’ve disrupted our House proceedings, and therefore we’re expelling you. That’s not the way democracy works.”

The state’s Constitution says House members cannot be expelled twice for the same violation.

It was the fourth time since the end of the Civil War that Tennessee House members expelled one of their own. Prior to Thursday’s historic expulsions, the last expulsion took place in 2016, when Republican state Rep. Jeremy Durham was voted out of the House after 22 women accused him of sexual misconduct.

Members of the audience, and protesters outside of the Historic Metro Courthouse where the council met, gathered in support of Jones’ reinstatement to the Tennessee legislature.

Inside the courthouse gallery before the vote, Jones’ supporters were heard singing popular songs like “This Little Light of Mine.”

Meanwhile, protesters outside were heard chanting the phrase, “No Justin, no peace.”

“The people made a choice, and it was the right choice,“ Council Member Delishia Porterfield, who nominated Jones to fill a then-vacant seat during the meeting Monday, said to the gallery. “On April 6, we witnessed a miscarriage of justice and an egregious assault on our democracy which resulted in over 70,000 Davidson County voters being silenced when our representative was expelled.”

Taiyler S. Mitchell contributed to this report.

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