Drawing the Line on
Amendments Kirk Overbey, PRP
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to process a tertiary or third-degree amendment? Since most of us find secondary amendments to be daunting, the parliamentary rule against tertiary amendments is intellectually satisfying, if not emotionally comforting. I once dared to allow a tertiary amendment when my client— a board of directors—struggled with a resolution for over an hour. While a secondary amendment was pending, a director exclaimed, “I’ve got it!” and blurted out a solution to the snag. Directors smiled and nodded their heads. Rather than drag this unskilled board through the proper procedure of declaring a tertiary amendment out of order, encouraging the defeat of the secondary amendment, and properly introducing the solution as a secondary amendment (RONR 12th ed. 12:12), I advised the president to approve the tertiary amendment by unanimous consent (RONR 12th ed. 25:16). All agreed, the resolution was swiftly adopted, and the board took up the next item of business. Not all complex situations are easily handled by a unanimous consent suspension of the rules and the prohibition against tertiary amendments is a good one. No doubt, the rule was developed through experience. Luther Cushing said that tertiary amendments “would be such a piling of questions one upon another, as would lead to great embarrassment…the line must be drawn somewhere…” (Cushing’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice, section 96). Cushing was clerk for the Massachusetts House in the 1830s and just might have encountered such embarrassment. I can visualize the speaker rapping the gavel and exclaiming “That’s it! No more tertiary amendments.” Indeed, the line must be drawn somewhere. While primary and secondary amendments are ensconced in the parliamentary lexicon, few would welcome the quaternary or quinary degree. But are such amendments even logically possible? Overwhelmed with curiosity, I 8 National Parliamentarian • Summer 2022
