Justin Jones, one of the two Black Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives for leading a gun control protest on the House floor, was sworn back in to his seat on Monday in a swift rebuke to the state’s Republican supermajority.
Within an hour of the Metropolitan Nashville Council unanimously voting to temporarily appoint Mr. Jones back to the seat, the young lawmaker had returned to take his place in the Republican-controlled legislature that overwhelmingly voted to expel him just four days earlier.
After leading hundreds of supporters on a march from the council meeting, Mr. Jones took his oath of office on the steps of the State Capitol, now empowered with a national platform and the backing of Democrats across the state and the country. The moment came two weeks after the mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville that prompted Mr. Jones and two other Democrats to protest in the House chamber.
“No expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but it will only galvanize and strengthen our movement,” Mr. Jones said in his first formal remarks.
Power to the people!” he concluded, and the gallery erupted in cheers.
Nashville’s move to appoint Mr. Jones deepens the bitter rift between the council and the Tennessee legislature’s Republican supermajority, which has flexed its control over liberal-leaning areas and moved to rein in the autonomy of the state’s largest cities. Just hours before the vote, a judicial panel temporarily halted a law that would slash the council in half, after Nashville sued the state.
The council voted 36 to 0 to send Mr. Jones, the only person nominated, back to the House ahead of a special election later this year. The fast pace of his reinstatement meant that he had not missed a single floor session in the House.