Dismissing non-voting members at a meeting

[Guest Jim Cox]

Are people that are attending a meeting and have received privilege of the floor to speak on a specific topic dismissed before action on said topic is taken?

[Richard Brown]

What do you mean by "dismissed"??  

 

In the normal situation of a non-member being granted permission to speak at a meeting, the guest is welcome to stay for the entire meeting, unless it is in executive session and other matters are going to be discussed.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

Also, what is meant by "non-voting members"? Is this a class of membership described in the bylaws?

[Josh Martin]

Are people that are attending a meeting and have received privilege of the floor to speak on a specific topic dismissed before action on said topic is taken?

 

It depends. Are these people members of the body that is meeting? If they are, then certainly not.

 

If they are not members, then I suppose the assembly could dismiss them before action is taken on the topic (unless the society's rules or applicable law provide otherwise), but this would seem rather rude unless there is some compelling reason to do so.

 

Lastly, the title of your topic refers to "non-voting members." If that's the situation here, it will ultimately be up to your organization to interpret its own bylaws (see RONR, 11th ed., pgs. 588-591 for some Principles of Interpretation), but it seems to me that they wouldn't be much of a member at all unless they at least had the right to attend.