Tennessee legislators decline to pass resolution denouncing neo-Nazism

A House committee declined to pass a resolution that stated Tennessee denounces white nationalism and neo-Nazism.

The sponsor, Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, didn't receive a second motion to proceed with discussing the resolution in the House State Government Subcommittee on Wednesday.

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"I'm in utter disbelief at what just happened," Clemmons said after the meeting. "I didn't think there was anything controversial about this resolution."

He said he had expected the resolution would be passed and placed on the House's consent calendar.

The subcommittee's sole Democrat, Rep. Darren Jernigan, D-Old Hickory, made the first motion, which was met with silence by the subcommittee's Republican members, Reps. Bill Sanderson, Bud Hulsey and Bob Ramsey.

After being cut off by Sanderson, the subcommittee chairman, from discussing the resolution, Clemmons was immediately granted a second motion to talk about an unrelated bill on studying state government contracts.

The day before, Clemmons failed to receive a second motion in another subcommittee on his Tennessee Net Neutrality and Internet Consumer Protection Act.

House Majority Leader Glen Casada, R-Franklin, referred questions to Sanderson about why the committee failed to take action on Clemmons’ resolution.

He did say, however, that he and others in the chambers’ leadership team would support the measure.

“The bill is not dead," Casada said. "It just didn’t get a second. I would encourage the representative to put it back on notice and hear it again."

House Republican Caucus Chairman Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, said the inaction by the committee on the resolution was the result of Clemmons not lining up enough votes to take up the bill before the panel convened.

“Part of being a great legislator is knowing your bill, knowing the committee that it’s going through, working the vote and asking for a motion and a second before you get there,” Williams said. “That’s what policymaking is.”

The Republican subcommittee members didn't respond to emailed questions from USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee regarding the resolution.

What the resolution denouncing neo-Nazis would have done

The House Joint Resolution, filed in the Tennessee General Assembly just days after the deadly August “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, stated that white nationalist and neo-Nazi ideologies “remain very real threats to social and racial progress."

It asked law enforcement agencies to consider the groups “domestic terrorist organizations," and to pursue criminal charges against them as police would in other types of terrorism.

If it had been approved, the House would have resolved to “strongly denounce and oppose the totalitarian impulses, violent terrorism, xenophobic biases, and bigoted ideologies that are promoted” by the groups.

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The resolution's spot on the subcommittee calendar came just days after white nationalist group Identity Evropa held a flash mob demonstration outside the Parthenon in Nashville on Sunday.

Roughly 60 people from the group, which was among the participants in the Charlottesville torch march and Unite the Right rally in August, stood outside the Parthenon building in Centennial Park, holding a 40-foot banner touting their “European roots.”

The group also held a national conference in the Nashville area last weekend.

The day before a white nationalist rally was scheduled to be held in October, Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, announced those involved were "not welcome in Tennessee" and denounced the "white supremacist movement."

The "White Lives Matter" rally, held in Shelbyville, drew roughly 200 white nationalist demonstrators and more than twice as many counterprotesters.

As for the future of the resolution, Clemmons said he is uncertain whether it would advance if he tried again.

"I would love to try to pass a resolution denouncing white nationalists and neo-Nazis, but if I can't even get a second in a subcommittee, it evidences this Republican supermajority's refusal to denounce these hate organizations, for what reason I cannot begin to imagine."

Joel Ebert contributed to this report.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com and on Twitter at @natalie_allison.