By Tony Cook

tony.cook@indystar.com

Responding to a public outcry, an Indiana House committee this morning nixed a controversial proposal that would have allowed some state contractors to discriminate against employees based on religion.

"I didn't quite understand the firestorm it would create," Rep. Eric Turner, the provision's author, told the House Ways and Means Committee.

The committee narrowly approved the provision on Monday, slipping it into an unrelated bill and quickly stirring controversy on social media.

Within a few hours, House Speaker Brian Bosma announced the measure would be sent back to Ways and Means for further discussion. By this morning, the panel quickly decided to remove it.

The flare-up briefly thrust Indiana into a national debate over the role religion should be allowed to play in business decisions.

In Arizona, lawmakers have approved a measure that would allow businesses with strongly held religious beliefs to deny service to gays and lesbians, and two cases are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in which religious business owners want their companies to be exempt from providing employee insurance coverage for contraception.

The Indiana proposal would have allowed any school, college, or religious institution affiliated with a church to make employment decisions based on religion, even if those organizations have a contract with the state.

Turner, who also authored the contentious constitutional same-sex marriage ban that has dominated most of the 2014 legislative session, said he had no intention of entering another national fray.

Rather, he said he wanted to address concerns the Indiana Attorney General's office had about a workforce training contract between the state and Indiana Wesleyan University that allowed the Christian university to hire in part based on religion.

The Cicero Republican said federal law currently allows such contracts.

"What we were trying to do in working with the attorney general's office is mirror federal law to allow these faith-based institutions to continue these contracts with the state," he said. "I never intended this amendment to be anything more than that."

Critics, however, said the provision went well beyond that.

"It would create a right to discriminate on the basis of religion for any position, even if it has nothing to do with the organization's religious mission," said Robert A. Katz, a professor at Indiana University McKinney School of Law. "This could create a religious test for janitors."

Democrats on the House committee commended the GOP majority for removing the discrimination provision.

"The process is working," said Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, "at the moment."

Call Star reporter Tony Cook at (317) 444-6081. Follow him on Twitter: @indystartony.