By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -A Nashville-area county council meeting on Monday may vote to return to the statehouse one of two Democratic Tennessee lawmakers who were expelled from the chamber last week after participating in a gun control protest.

Republicans who control the state House of Representatives on Thursday voted to kick out Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two Black men who recently joined the legislature, after they said the two lawmakers broke rules for decorum on the House floor on March 30.

At least 29 of the 40 members of the Metropolitan Council for Nashville and Davidson County have said they back appointing Jones as an interim representative for his previous seat until a special election can be held, The Tennessean newspaper reported. Returning Jones would send a pointed message to the Republicans who expelled him.

“I think we have heard long and clear from people in Nashville, across the state of Tennessee and across the country that democracy needs to be served,” Nashville’s vice mayor, Jim Shulman, who serves as council president, said in an interview on CNN.

A Memphis-area board of commissioners plans on Wednesday to consider reappointing Pearson on an interim basis to the seat from which he was removed.

In an email to Reuters, Doug Kufner, communications director for Tennessee’s Speaker of the House of Representatives Cameron Sexton, referred to the state constitution that gives county legislatures power to appoint interim state representatives in case of vacancies.

“The two governing bodies will make the decision as to who they want to appoint to these seats,” Kufner said in his email. “Those two individuals will be seated as representatives as the constitution requires.”

Jones and Pearson had both said on Sunday they hoped to be reappointed and that they would run again in special elections.

Jones, Pearson and Gloria Johnson, a white representative, led the statehouse floor protest to demand stricter gun control laws after the March 27 school shooting in Nashville that killed three 9-year-olds and three adults on the school staff.

Republicans also targeted Johnson but came up one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to oust her, prompting criticisms that race was a factor in the expulsions.

The expulsions have become a rallying cry for Democrats nationally on the issues of gun violence prevention and racial inequality, and an opportunity to push back against Republican dominance at the state level.

While Democrats are competitive nationally, winning the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, Republicans control many of the statehouses where they have large majorities and where issues such as abortion and gun control are often decided.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Nashville on Friday to support the three Tennessee lawmakers targeted for expulsion.

“The issue, which gets back to these three, is that we need leaders who have the courage to act at statehouses and in Washington, D.C., in the United States Congress,” Harris, who is Black and Asian American, told a gathering at Fisk University, a historically Black school of which Jones is a graduate. “Have the courage to act instead of the cowardice to not allow debate.”

The Nashville-area Metropolitan Council called a meeting for 4:30 p.m. CDT (2130 GMT) on Monday to announce the vacancy of Jones’ seat, discuss the rules for filling vacancies and possibly vote for an interim successor, according to the agenda.

In Shelby County, which includes Pearson’s Memphis district, the chair of the county board of commissioners announced on Sunday that a special meeting had been called for Wednesday to consider reappointing Pearson to his seat.

The board of commissioners appointed Pearson, 28, in January to fill a legislative vacancy. He then won a special election in March. A Memphis native, he previously worked as a community organizer and activist who participated in protests against an oil pipeline through Memphis that was canceled, according to his campaign biography.

Jones, 27, was elected to Tennessee’s House of Representatives last year. He attended Fisk on the John R. Lewis Scholarship for Social Activism and has been arrested more than a dozen times for nonviolent protests, according to his campaign biography.