Robert's Rules of Order and the coronavirus

[Scott Forbes]

Hi Democrats,

Hope you’re all healthy and staying safe. As you’re aware, Gov. Inslee has issued a “Stay Home – Stay Healthy” order that requires all Washingtonians to stay home unless conducting essential activities or delivering essential services. This order has the force of law and remains in effect through at least April 7.

I wanted to touch on what this order means in terms of parliamentary procedure, especially since many of our LDs are struggling to comply with bylaws that don’t appear to permit virtual meetings. Section 2 of Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (p. 16) states one of the core principles of parliamentary procedure:

When a society or an assembly has adopted a particular parliamentary manual—such as this book—as its authority, the rules contained in that manual are binding upon it in all cases where they are not inconsistent with the bylaws (or constitution) of that body, any of its special rules of order, or any provisions of local, state, or national law applying to the particular type of organization.

The “Stay Home Stay Healthy” order is a legally binding order issued under a provision of state law, and most definitely applies to our organizations. As such, I would advise that the rules in Robert’s requiring meetings to be held in person are, as of this moment, inconsistent with state law that prohibits such meetings from being held in person. These parliamentary rules are therefore superseded by state law, and are not in effect for the duration of the stay-home order.

The alternative interpretation is that if Robert’s prohibits you from holding virtual meetings, and state law prohibits you from holding in-person meetings, then you can’t meet at all and your organization is paralyzed for the duration of the stay-home order—or you must jump through hoops like, say, meeting at a drive-in theater or such to pass an emergency bylaws amendment. My advice would be that this interpretation should be ruled out using traditional legal canons of statutory construction, such as the absurdity doctrine or the avoidance canon, since this interpretation of Robert’s would prevent most organizations from holding meetings at all—and since most of the hoop-jumping exercises I’ve seen proposed would reduce the risk of infection but would still be illegal under the stay-home order. The stay-home order does not say “stay home, unless of course you really really need to amend your LPO bylaws.”

The State Party issued guidance a few weeks ago saying that Robert’s defines a “meeting” as a gathering in person, and as such local party organizations can only hold virtual meetings if their bylaws allow it—and then recommending that LPOs in that situation try to hold a special in-person meeting to pass a narrowly tailored bylaws amendment. I think this guidance may have been correct at the time, at least in a “strictly following the letter of the rules” sense, but in any case the State Party guidance was issued before the change in state law. I think it's safe to say that (a) the previous State Party guidance has been overtaken by events, and (b) the State Party has had their hands full trying to make the caucuses happen virtually, and so hasn't had the bandwidth to go back and update their guidance to LPOs. So I think we (and by “we” I mean this Bylaws and Rules Committee) may need to step in, at least with regard to defining a set of rules (and/or agreeing on an interpretation of the existing rules) that allows the KCDCC to hold meetings in the near future, and that may also be a useful framework for the LPOs.

When the stay-home order is rescinded, then in-person meetings will become legal again and the rules in Robert’s regarding in-person meetings would again be binding on our organizations. Even then, however, it may still be unsafe to hold LPO meetings even if the law permits them. My personal advice is that people should not be risking their lives (or, more to the point, should not be risking other people’s lives) to uphold an interpretation of Robert’s or the bylaws that fails to recognize the changed circumstances in which we find ourselves. As such, we should plan to conduct meetings virtually until a vaccine is widely available, and should interpret our rules and bylaws in a manner that doesn’t create a barrier to doing so.

My two cents,

— Scott