Leadership Letter
March 2025
ASK COUNSELOR TARA
ASCE’s General Counsel Tara Hoke clarifies legal questions facing sections and branches here each month. Ask Tara your question.
How can we close a discussion that’s gone too long or gotten redundant?
The goal of parliamentary procedures is to provide an opportunity for board members to hold free and fair discussions before taking action on a matter under consideration. But sometimes a board may find that a discussion has gone well past the time allotted on the agenda, or that the conversation has become circular, with each side stating and restating the same arguments and ideas. In such cases, Robert’s Rules offers two ways to close a debate, an informal method and a formal method.
Using the informal method, a chair can suggest (or a member can suggest to the chair) that it is time to close the discussion and move to a vote. If no member objects to that suggestion, it is deemed that the discussion is closed by unanimous consent, and the chair may then call for a vote.
However, if any one or more members does not agree to close a debate, then under Robert’s Rules a decision can only be made to close the debate by means of a formal motion. This type of motion is officially named “moving the previous question,” but it is more commonly known as “calling the question.”
There is a common misconception that any member can simply say “I call the question,” and all discussion must immediately cease. Of course, if any person could stop debate at any time, there might never be useful discussions at all – which would certainly hamper the effective functioning of a board.
The actual rules around calling the question/previous question are as follows:
1. The person who makes the motion must have the floor (i.e., you can’t shout over someone or interrupt to “call the question”)
2. The motion must be seconded.
3. A motion to call the question can’t be debated, nor can it be amended.
4. Because this motion impacts a member’s fundamental right to speak on a topic, the threshold for passing this motion is higher than a simple majority; a vote to call the question requires a 2/3 affirmative vote.