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In the event the membership of an organization wishes to discipline a member for offences which happened outside of a meeting or were not attended to in a timely manner at a previous meeting, then the rules outlined in Section 63 are followed unless a bylaw supersedes them. If the bylaws of an organization define the process for removal of a member, but do not define other forms of discipline such as suspension of voting rights or election to positions of trust, would the rules defined in the bylaws for removal apply to lesser disciplines or would the bylaws only apply to the process of removal and require a trial for all other forms of discipline, excluding censure? I find it difficult to imagine that a lesser process can be used for removal, but a full trial would be needed to suspend voting rights. Your guidance is appreciated.

Our board recently adopted an anti-harassment policy that lists revocation of membership as a possible consequence of violating this policy. Our bylaws, which are currently being revised, do not mention discipline at all. Our membership only meets once a year, and we'd like to have disciplinary matters handled by a discipline committee (which does not yet exist), rather than a trial by the whole membership. My question is how much of this needs to be in the bylaws? After reading RONR's lengthy section on discipline, and searching this forum, I think we need to have a standing discipline committee and a provision that assigns the handling of these questions to the committee. Is this the best approach, and is there anything else we should add? Thanks for any advice.

I am a member of a national club. Our members are all over the US. Our Bylaws state that a nominating committee is to be formed and announce their nominations on or before August 1st. Individuals can then petition to be on the ballot by August 24th. The bylaws go on to state "SECTION 3: Annual Election - The election of officers and delegate to The American Kennel Club (who may but need not be a director or officer of the Club) shall be conducted by secret ballot. Voting for candidates, if necessary, shall take place in September. The Secretary or an independent firm should send, receive and count ballots. The nominated candidate receiving the greatest number of votes for each office shall be declared elected. The results of the mail-in balloting shall be announced in the next Quarterly Newsletter." What actions can be taken if the Board fails to have an election during the month of September? The next newsletter is due to be published the first week of October and that should have the results in it. It is September 17 and I do not see the Board pulling off a mailed ballot election by the end of the month.

Suppose that according to the procedures on and before page 647, following the offender being named, a member moves "That [name of the offender] be required to leave the meeting hall during the remainder of the meeting." What would the threshold for this motion be? Alternatively, suppose that a member moves "That the rights of membership of [name of the offender] be suspended for a period of __ days." What would the threshold for this motion be?

I might be a bit confused so looking for clarification. Board Minutes of an organization was published to its membership today. This is a national club so the BOD meets monthly via conference call and members do not attend the meetings. There was a special meeting held where the BOD received notification that a member of the current board wanted to prefer charges against another current board member. The fee required was paid and the board member was notified of the charges against them. It was also stated that a motion was made to move ahead with charges against two other members. I don't see where a specific member paid the fee to prefer charges so not sure this set of charges is legitimate. I'm assuming the board itself is preferring charges against these two additional members but there were not many details. The fact that these three members having charges preferred against them are members who were recently elected by the membership to serve on the next BOD (during a contentious election), is interesting to me. It seems that there might be some sour grapes here but, I digress. Each member who has had charges preferred against them has been notified and a hearing date has been set. Should this "special meeting" actually have been held in Executive Session, and if yes, how does not being held in Executive Session affect this process going forward?

Page 647 says that after the chair has given proper warning, it can be moved to remove the offending member from the meeting hall. Would this motion need a majority or two-thirds to pass?

Given the current political climate, the question of procedures for handling accusations of sexual harassment within our group has come up. (It should be noted that the discussion is hypothetical at this point, as nobody has been accused.) As I understand our bylaws, they only contain explicit discipline requirements for violations of the loyalty oath and for excessive absences from meetings. If (again, hypothetically speaking) we had a member who had sexually harassed someone else, can we specify that as a charge for a trial, or is the lack of a cover-all "members shall not do stuff that makes us look bad" clause in the bylaws going to cause problems?