Justin Jones alleges Tennessee House Speaker violated Constitution with ‘disparate racial treatment’

Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s House Speaker, alleging that he violated the Constitution for restricting Jones’s right to free speech and for giving him “disparate racial treatment.”

Jones is filing the lawsuit against state House Speaker Cameron Sexton “to hold him accountable for his anti-democratic and unconstitutional actions,” according to a press release sent by his campaign Tuesday.

In the 46-page complaint, Jones alleges that Sexton’s moves to oust him earlier this year, keep him off committees and to prevent him from speaking on certain bills have violated numerous sections of both the U.S. Constitution and the Tennessee state constitution.

The complaint names Sexton, state House chief clerk Tammy Letzler, state House Chief Sergeant at Arms Bobby Trotter and parliamentarian Daniel Hicks as co-defendants.

Jones, who is Black, accused Sexton of violating the 14th Amendment due to “disparate racial treatment” he received from the Speaker and his co-defendants. He cited the amendment’s clause that says no state “shall deny any person within its jurisdiction the protection of the laws.”

“The government denied equal protection to Representative Jones in treating him differently than similarly situated white House members for the same conduct,” the complaint reads.

The complaint points to a number of incidents where Jones alleges that he was treated differently from his white colleagues because of his race, including his expulsion from the state House earlier this year. He said that while he was voted to be expelled from the House, state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D), who is white and “engaged in the exact same speech and protest” as Jones, was not.

Three Democratic Tennessee state lawmakers — Jones, Johnson and state Rep. Justin Pearson — participated in a gun rights protest on the House floor in April shortly after a shooter opened fire in a Nashville school and killed six people. While Jones and Pearson, who are both Black, were voted to be expelled by their colleagues, Johnson survived her vote. Jones and Pearson won back their seats in subsequent special elections.

The complaint also said that Jones has been denied positions on a committee after he was reinstated to the House on April 10, but Johnson, “who was also censured and removed from committee seats for her speech and protest but who is white, was allowed to return to her committee assignments.”

The complaint alleges that Sexton and his co-defendants prevented him “from expressing views on critical issues that he was elected to express, ensuring that viewpoints dissenting from their own are silenced, neither heard nor spoken,” which the complaint says violates the Constitution.

“No one is above the law, including Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton,” Jones said in a statement.

The complaint also alleges that Sexton’s and his co-defendant’s actions have deprived Jones of other benefits of the Tennessee Legislature, including seniority status and retirement benefits.

The lawsuit comes after House Republicans voted to silence Jones during a special session in August, after determining that he had breached the chamber’s newly adopted rules by straying off topic from the bill being debated. Jones had announced at the time that he was planning to call for a vote of no confidence in Sexton “due to his continued abuse of power and dishonor to the public office he holds.”

Since the expulsion votes over the gun violence protest, which drew national attention to the state’s Legislature, Jones, Pearson and Johnson have been dubbed the “Tennessee Three.” The three of them also railed against new House rules earlier this month that attempted to limit what members could say on the floor.

Johnson also launched a Senate campaign last month.

The Hill has reached out to Sexton’s office for comment.

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