Two Democrat senators are requesting the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the expulsion of two Tennessee state House Democrats who disrupted a floor session with a bullhorn.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday, urging the department to investigate the expulsion of the lawmakers on constitutional and civil rights grounds.
“We do not believe that breaking decorum is alone sufficient cause for employing the most draconian of consequences to duly-elected lawmakers,” the senators say in their letter obtained by 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 senators reference the 1966 Supreme Court case Bond v. Floyd, where the Georgia House decision to deny a representative his seat because of his views on the Vietnam War was ruled unconstitutional.
The letter followed the historic expulsion last week by Tennessee Republicans of Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) over their actions during a storming of the state capitol building by gun control activists, where the two lawmakers led chants with a bullhorn and disrupted the floor session. A third lawmaker who stood by Jones and Pearson, Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), escaped expulsion by one vote.
Tennessee House Republican Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland) said that the actions on the floor were unprecedented.
“It’s never been that three state representatives attempted to incite a riot in the middle of the House floor. It’s dangerous, it’s inappropriate, and it silences the other 96 members,” he said.
Warnock and Schumer also said that Attorney General Merrick Garland should “take all steps necessary to uphold the democratic integrity of our nation’s legislative bodies,” and said that the Democrat lawmakers were“courageously participating in nonviolent demonstrations.”
Jones has already returned to the state house after the Metro Nashville City Council voted to reinstate him while Pearson was reinstated following a vote of the Shelby County Commission on Wednesday. Both have postured themselves as modern-day civil rights activists and have seized on the considerable media attention that turned their direction.
The expulsion earned condemnation from the White House with President Joe Biden calling it “shocking, undemocratic, and unprecedented” and Vice President Kamala Harris visiting Nashville to meet with the Democrat lawmakers.