Indiana General Assembly passed amended HJR-3, a constitutional same-sex marriage ban

The Indiana Senate passed House Joint Resolution 3, a proposed constitutional amendment providing that "only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana," by a vote of 32-17 on February 17, 2014, completing the resolution's passage by the 2014 General Assembly. The House had passed the same amended language 57-40 on January 28, 2014, after voting 52-43 on January 27, 2014 to strip a second sentence from HJR-3 that would have banned civil unions and domestic-partnership benefits. Rep. Eric Turner, the resolution's Republican author, said the amendment was necessary to protect the state's existing statutory marriage definition from being overturned by a court, while House Minority Leader Scott Pelath said removing the second sentence did not "dismantle" the measure's underlying aim.

Under Indiana's constitutional-amendment process, an amendment must pass two separately elected General Assemblies in identical language before going to a public referendum; because the House had altered the wording from the version a prior General Assembly passed in 2011, the 2014 passage restarted rather than completed that two-Assembly requirement, and the amendment did not appear on the 2014 ballot. Freedom Indiana, the campaign that opposed the measure, said lawmakers were "finished with the amendment this session." The measure was never taken up again after 2014; the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and mooted the effort before it could reach a second Assembly or a referendum.