Judge Blocks Tennessee House’s Sign Rule After Grieving Moms Removed by Troopers

A judge handed down a temporary restraining order on Wednesday blocking the Tennessee House of Representatives from enforcing a new rule banning signs in the chamber’s galleries. The order comes as part of a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee had filed that morning, urging a judge to intercede after three women were removed by state troopers from a hearing a day prior for carrying small paper signs advocating for gun reform. House Republicans had approved the rule on Monday at the start of the special session on a recent school shooting in Nashville. “The public interest is extremely great: nothing less than the constitutional rights of Tennesseans to participate in their government is at stake,” ACLU attorney Stella Yarbrough wrote in the filing, according to The Tennessean. At a Wednesday hearing, several dozen people in the audience carried signs. Democratic Rep. Jason L. Powell said that Republican Rep. Lowell Russell, the chairman of the Civil Justice Subcommittee who ordered the removals, “owes the public and the people of Tennessee an apology for the way they were treated yesterday.” He added: “And to turn a school shooting tragedy into a travesty of democracy and the First Amendment is shameful… Shame on us.”