Republican leaders of the Tennessee Legislature on May 12 responded to last week's fiery protests against the state's new congressional map last week by stripping committee assignments from all Democratic members.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton notified Democratic Leader Karen Camper in a letter that members of her party would be removed from all standing committees and subcommittees of the House of Representatives, except where membership is required.
Sexton said the actions taken to disrupt the democratic and legislative processes and create disorder included interlocking arms in the House, blocking aisles on the House Floor, instigating and encouraging disruption with paid protesters and attendees, distributing earplugs, and using props and noisemakers.
The Democratic caucus members will be removed from their assignments until next session, according to the notice.
State House and Senate members joined hundreds of activists, civil rights groups, and locals who flooded the Capitol in Nashville on May 5 and May 6 during the session. Tennessee state troopers were forced to clear out legislative galleries and hallways as demonstrators shouted, burned objects, and disrupted meetings and votes.
Three people were arrested on May 7 by state troopers during one of the protests inside the Tennessee Capitol.
During the short session, lawmakers decided to add a Republican-leaning district by redrawing the Ninth Congressional District, which included Memphis. Memphis is represented by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), and is the state’s lone Democratic seat.
Nashville Democrat Rep. Justin Jones, one of the more vocal protesters, said he received his official letter stripping him of his committee assignments for, as Jones characterized it, “protesting their white supremacist agenda.”
Jones accused his Republican colleagues of “racial retaliation” against Tennessee’s black voters.
“This is not new,” Jones said in a statement posted on Facebook on May 12. “This is the same pattern of racial discrimination and authoritarian abuse we have come to expect. [Speaker Sexton's] assault on our democracy is not about me, but silencing the voices of the people who democratically elected me, the 70,000 people who call District 52 home.”
Jones vowed to continue fighting and getting in “good trouble.”
State Rep. Justin Pearson, whose brother was arrested during the protests, announced his removal from committees on X.
“Speaker of the TN House Cameron Sexton just removed me and every Democrat—and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on,” Pearson said in the post. “This move strips nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve in TN state [legislature].”
Sexton’s office was not available after business hours for comment on the letter.