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INDIANAPOLIS — An exception to Indiana's "Open Door" law all but ensures that Hoosiers may never know why individual Republican senators voted to delete the list of protected classes from legislation authorizing enhanced criminal sentences for bias-motivated crimes.

Senate Republicans met for more than four hours behind closed doors Tuesday to decide prior to the start of the public Senate session how they would vote on the controversial amendment to Senate Bill 12, proposed by state Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis.

State law permits political party caucuses to meet in secret to plan strategy and hold discussions designed to prepare the members for taking official action.

But, in the Senate, 40 of the 50 members are Republicans, which means the decisions made in GOP caucus meetings are, in effect, final, since it takes just 26 senators to approve or reject any motion, amendment or legislation.

Debate and discussion on those proposals is not conducted in public. Instead, caucus members are required to never disclose what is said in caucus at the risk of being barred from future meetings and banished to a back-row seat in the Senate chamber.