Tennessee Democrats stripped of House committee seats over redistricting protests
by Steve Gorman
May 12 (Reuters) – The Republican speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives on Tuesday stripped Democratic lawmakers of all their committee assignments as punishment for their role in raucous protests during last week’s special session on redistricting.
The move comes five days after the Republican-controlled Tennessee House approved a new congressional map that eliminated the Black-majority district in the U.S. House of Representatives built around the predominantly African-American city of Memphis.
Last Thursday’s vote, which will likely result in a Democratic-held Republican seat swing in November’s midterm elections, comes as many Southern states are moving to take advantage of a recent U.S. Supreme Court vote that severely weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The House vote in Nashville was met with raucous protests by activists shouting from the visitor gallery balcony and Black lawmakers praying, linking arms at the front of the chamber as protesters honked air horns and chanted against the new map.
Opponents of the redrawn congressional district cast the ruination of the majority-black district as a throwback to the Jim Crow era of segregation in the Deep South.
In a letter to Karen Camper, the Democratic leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives, speaker Cameron Sexton said House Democrats had been removed from all standing committees and subcommittees for disciplinary purposes for “inciting and encouraging disorder and disorder on the House floor” during last Thursday’s vote.
As examples, he cited lawmakers “locking guns in the House well,” “blocking corridors on the House floor” and using “prohibited props and noisemakers.”
Of the 99 seats in the Tennessee House, 75 are held by Republicans and 24 by Democrats.
At least one House Democrat, Rep. Justin Jones, posted online a copy of the letter his committee and subcommittee received as notice of his impeachment, directing any questions to Camper.
“This is the same pattern of racial discrimination and authoritarian abuse we have come to expect,” Jones, who is Black and represents Nashville, said on social media.
Camper, the Democratic leader who is Black and represents Memphis, later posted an open letter on his Facebook page condemning the redrawing of the congressional district in the Memphis area as “one of the most disturbing abuses of power this legislature has seen in recent memory.”
“When Democrats stand up, speak out, and expose what is happening in this chamber, the response from this supermajority will be retaliation,” he wrote. “We are hurt. We are disappointed. But we are not afraid.”
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Ross Colvin and John Mair)
