Defeating a Motion by Tabling

[Guest George Loomis]

I am a trustee on the board of our homeowners association. At a recent public meeting of the board, I made a motion that was seconded by another trustee. The Chair, immediately, before allowing any debate on the motion, declared the motion tabled and refused to accept my position that his action was not in accordance with Robert's Rules of Order. The meeting was allowed to continue without any further action on my motion.

I later appealed to the President of our management company to intercede on my behalf and she refused to do so because she considered my motion as "improper". In my appeal, I quoted from RONR that "This is a common violation of fair procedure" and provided a complete answer to the question, "Can something be defeated by adopting a motion to table it", even though such an adoption did not occur.

Absent a motion to Object to Consideration of the Question or to Postpone Indefinitely, was the action taken by the Chair in order?

[Guest Jon]

My answer to a similar question in another thread applies here as well:

Under Robert's Rules, a motion to "table" something has a meaning not intended by most people who move to table. The popular usage of this term differs from the Robert's Rules meaning.

Under Robert's Rules, a motion to lay the pending business on the table is appropriate when there is an urgent need to consider something else. If approved, the pending business is laid on the table, the urgent business can be considered, and when that is done someone makes a motion to take from the table the business that was laid upon it.

In practice, when most people make a motion to "table" something, they are not trying to do that, but rather something else that under Robert's Rules should really be done by a different motion. Typically, the person who proposes tabling may mean to:

* Kill the pending business entirely, in which case they should make a motion to postpone indefinitely,

* Postpone the pending business to a fixed time, usually at a later meeting, in which case they should make a motion to postpone definitely, or

* Send the pending business to committee (or back to committee) in which case they should make a motion to commit (or recommit).

But any of these cases requires a motion adopted by the meeting. It's not something the Chair of the meeting can just do. The action of your Chair was improper.

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[David A Foulkes]

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I think this says it all!

[Guest S Reddom]

If motions are tabled, rather than postponed indefinitely or postponed to a certain time, ie rather than reschdeueld, adjourned to another date or referred for further study, would this not violate the right of the minority RONP P 202 L10-11)?

[Chris Harrison]

If motions are tabled, rather than postponed indefinitely or postponed to a certain time, ie rather than reschdeueld, adjourned to another date or referred for further study, would this not violate the right of the minority RONP P 202 L10-11)?

No. All of the motions you mentioned require a majority vote so no rule protecting a substantial minority (more than 1/3) is being violated. Of course the Chair should not have declared the motion tabled without a vote (though if someone had made the motion to Table for the purposes of killing the motion the Chair should have stated the question as a motion to Postpone Indefinitely).

By the way the page and lines you cited had nothing to do with the question you were asking (p. 202 covers Previous Question and ll. 10-11 was the last few words of a paragraph and the first line of the next one). You must be citing from a different text than RONR/11.

[David A Foulkes]

..... would this not violate the right of the minority RONP P 202 L10-11)?

This is from the 10th Edition, which has been replaced by the new and improved 11th Edition. Time for an upgrade.