The New York State attorney general’s office has opened an inquiry into the Boy Scouts of America’s hiring practices to determine whether the group has discriminated as an employer against gays.

The office will ask Wayne Brock, the chief scout executive of the Boy Scouts’ national organization, for detailed information on the group’s involvement in hiring decisions there and at its local councils. The request comes three weeks after the Boy Scouts’ New York City affiliate said it had hired a gay Eagle Scout to work in a scout camp this summer.

The New York group, the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils, said it had hired Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout who grew up in Kensington, Md., and is a student at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Over the last couple of years, he has become a prominent figure in the debate about gays in scouting.

That debate escalated in 2013 after the Boy Scouts’ national board approved what amounted to a partial ban, permitting openly gay scouts to join the ranks if they were under 18, but excluding gay leaders 18 and older. That decision, in turn, followed a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 that said the Boy Scouts have a constitutional right to exclude gay members.