Motion to Suspend the Rules

[Guest Jon]

My organization was voting on whether to authorize certain new positions, which under our rules required a 2/3 vote.  Under our rules, some members of the organization were eligible to vote while others were not.  Someone who was eligible to vote moved to suspend the rules that prevented the ineligible members from voting.  Someone else raised a point of order that the motion to suspend was not proper.  We don't have a parliamentarian, but I am the member most knowledgeable about Robert's Rules, so everyone looked at me.

Is there any reason why the motion to suspend would not be proper?  The argument of the member who made the point of order relied on our organization's rule about suspending the rules, which provides that by 2/3 vote we can "suspend any of the rules, including the rules of order, for the consideration of any item of business," except for specified rules.  The specified exceptions include our rule on amending the rules, which requires notice of the proposed amendment prior to the meeting.  The member who raised the point of order claimed that the motion to suspend was an improper attempt to amend the rules.   

I thought that the motion to suspend the rules was not an attempt to "amend" the rules, since no rule would be permanently changed.   The voting rule would only be suspended this one time.  Was that right?  So I suggested that the point of order was not well taken.  Was that right?

I also said that the motion to suspend the rules was not debatable and that we simply had to vote on it.  Was that right?  If a motion to suspend the rules is made and second, must it immediately be voted on?  What if the assembly doesn't understand it and wants to know what the effect of approving it would be?

 

[Joshua Katz]

The motion to suspend the rules was out of order. The rules may not be suspended in a manner which impacts fundamental rights like voting, and by suspending it in this manner, you diluted the votes of those actually entitled to vote. 

What's more, eligibility to vote is not a rule of order, and rules in the bylaws which are not rules of order are not suspendable unless they explicitly provide for their own suspension.

More abstractly, it should be understood that specific rules are never suspended. Rather, you suspend rules for a particular purpose (which your bylaws, in a needless fashion, seem to have captured fairly accurately). That is, you suspend any and all rules preventing you from taking an action (the assembly, that is). Here, no rule prevented you from taking a vote, there was simply a rule prescribing who is allowed to vote. There was no action the assembly wished to take (other than the suspension itself) which the rules preventing it from taking, which is the purpose of suspending the rules. 

It appears to me to be correct that the suspension, as out of order as it was, was not an attempted amendment - although an amendment would have been the proper way to do what you wanted.

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

29 minutes ago, Guest Jon said:

The argument of the member who made the point of order relied on our organization's rule about suspending the rules, which provides that by 2/3 vote we can "suspend any of the rules, including the rules of order, for the consideration of any item of business," except for specified rules.  The specified exceptions include our rule on amending the rules, which requires notice of the proposed amendment prior to the meeting.  The member who raised the point of order claimed that the motion to suspend was an improper attempt to amend the rules.

An amendment is a lasting action. A suspension is, by definition, a temporary action. The interpretation of your bylaws is up to your organization, but I would not consider a motion to suspend a rule to be an attempt to amend something. Moreover, based on what little you quoted, I would say that "any rule" means "any rule" and thus, RONR's prohibition on suspending fundamental rules regarding voting is superseded. But again, this is all a matter of interpreting your custom rules, which is ultimately a task for the members of your society.

[Richard Brown]

Guest Jon, in what document are all of those rules that you spoke of found? Are they in the bylaws? Special Rules of Order? Are they all in the same document or are some of them in one document and some in another? If different documents, please tell us which rule is in which document.

I think that in order to suspend the fundamental principle of parliamentary law that only members can vote would require very clear language in the bylaws permitting its suspension. See , for example, page 263 of RONR.

[Guest Zev]

1 hour ago, Richard Brown said:

I think that in order to suspend the fundamental principle of parliamentary law that only members can vote would require very clear language in the bylaws permitting its suspension

Quote

RULES THAT CANNOT BE SUSPENDED. Rules contained in the bylaws (or constitution) cannot be suspended -- no matter how large the vote in favor of doing so or how inconvenient the rule in question may be -- unless the particular rule specifically provides for its own suspension, or unless the rule properly is in the nature of a rule of order as described on page 17, lines 22-25.

RONR 11th edition, page 263. Suspending both the fundamental principle of only members having voting privileges and the bylaws requirement of previous notice simultaneously would in my opinion require specific language in the bylaws authorizing such a move.

[Josh Martin]

13 hours ago, Joshua Katz said:

The motion to suspend the rules was out of order. The rules may not be suspended in a manner which impacts fundamental rights like voting, and by suspending it in this manner, you diluted the votes of those actually entitled to vote. 

What's more, eligibility to vote is not a rule of order, and rules in the bylaws which are not rules of order are not suspendable unless they explicitly provide for their own suspension.

More abstractly, it should be understood that specific rules are never suspended. Rather, you suspend rules for a particular purpose (which your bylaws, in a needless fashion, seem to have captured fairly accurately). That is, you suspend any and all rules preventing you from taking an action (the assembly, that is). Here, no rule prevented you from taking a vote, there was simply a rule prescribing who is allowed to vote. There was no action the assembly wished to take (other than the suspension itself) which the rules preventing it from taking, which is the purpose of suspending the rules. 

It appears to me to be correct that the suspension, as out of order as it was, was not an attempted amendment - although an amendment would have been the proper way to do what you wanted.

Mr. Katz, I certainly concur that, so far as RONR is concerned, the rules in question may not be suspended.

We are told, however, that the organization has its own rules on this subject, which provide that any of the organization’s rules may be suspended, except for certain exceptions, and this is not one of the exceptions. It would seem to me that the organization’s rule takes precedence.

Edited November 18, 2018 at 02:10 PM by Josh Martin

[Joshua Katz]

I agree that the organization's rules take precedence, and certainly interpreting them is a task for the organization, not for me. But in my personal opinion, the provision quoted simply states the same rule as is present in RONR, other than the voting provisions. 

13 hours ago, Guest Jon said:

which provides that by 2/3 vote we can "suspend any of the rules, including the rules of order, for the consideration of any item of business,"

That is, just as RONR provides, they can be suspended only for the purpose of considering an item of business. This suspension was not in pursuit of considering an item of business. There was no item of business which the assembly could not consider without suspending the rules. 

But, again, that's just my opinion.

[Richard Brown]

It seems to me that before we can opine much on Guest Jon's "rule" that any rule can be suspended, it is imperative that we know whether that rule is in the bylaws. I asked him that question in my post above which is the fourth comment in this thread, but he has not responded. I also asked him to tell us what documents the other rules he referred to are in. 

Responding to another of guest John's questions, a motion to suspend the rules is not debatable. However, if all of the rules can be suspended, then I suppose the rule that says a point of order is not debatable can also be suspended and this business of suspending the rules can go on ad infinitum. As long as RONR is being followed, however, it is not suspendable. If a member has a question about the effect of suspending a rule, I suppose he could make a parliamentary inquiry or a request for information. 

[J. J.]

3 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

Mr. Katz, I certainly concur that, so far as RONR is concerned, the rules in question may not be suspended.

We are told, however, that the organization has its own rules on this subject, which provide that any of the organization’s rules may be suspended, except for certain exceptions, and this is not one of the exceptions. It would seem to me that the organization’s rule takes precedence.

In principle, I agree.

A rule in the bylaws, even one that is not in the nature of a rule of order, may provide for its own suspension (p. 13, ll. 5-9, p. 263, ll. 4-5).  A rule that said, "Only full members may vote, unless the assembly, by a three-fifths vote, suspends this rule," would permit the assembly to suspend the rule and permit persons other than full members to vote.  Such a suspension would not "amend" the bylaws.  Likewise, a rule that said, without additional qualification,  that the assembly may "suspend any of the rules, including the rules of order, for the consideration of any item of business," means that the assembly has the ability to suspend any rule.

I will, however, reserve judgment in this case.   While we are told that there the exceptions, we do not know what these exceptions are.  There may be something, even in another section of the bylaws, that might create an exception and prohibit the rule relating to who can vote from being suspended in this instance.

I will slightly disagree with my colleague Richard's claim that a motion to suspend the rules would necessarily be undebatable in all circumstances.  The motion to suspend the rules could be raised as an incidental main motion and, as such, be debatable (p. 74, ll. 17-23). 

Edited November 18, 2018 at 05:28 PM by J. J.

[Gary Novosielski]

On 11/17/2018 at 7:58 PM, Joshua Katz said:

The motion to suspend the rules was out of order. The rules may not be suspended in a manner which impacts fundamental rights like voting, and by suspending it in this manner, you diluted the votes of those actually entitled to vote. 

What's more, eligibility to vote is not a rule of order, and rules in the bylaws which are not rules of order are not suspendable unless they explicitly provide for their own suspension.

More abstractly, it should be understood that specific rules are never suspended. Rather, you suspend rules for a particular purpose (which your bylaws, in a needless fashion, seem to have captured fairly accurately). That is, you suspend any and all rules preventing you from taking an action (the assembly, that is). Here, no rule prevented you from taking a vote, there was simply a rule prescribing who is allowed to vote. There was no action the assembly wished to take (other than the suspension itself) which the rules preventing it from taking, which is the purpose of suspending the rules. 

It appears to me to be correct that the suspension, as out of order as it was, was not an attempted amendment - although an amendment would have been the proper way to do what you wanted.

But in this case, the rules (in the nature of bylaws?) provide for their own suspension, in all except certain enumerated cases.  I think an argument could be made that if voting restrictions were not on that list, they could be suspended.

At the very least, this is something that is open to interpretation by the assembly.  I tend to agree with the OPs interpretation, but of course if the chair accepted and ruled in accordance with that advice, it would be appealable, and that would decide the matter and set a precedent.

Edited November 21, 2018 at 01:34 AM by Gary Novosielski