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PHOENIX — Last-minute legislative action that led to placement of a constitutional ban on gay marriage on the November ballot has triggered a rare state Senate Ethics Committee investigation.

On a 3-2 vote, the committee agreed Monday to hold hearings on whether Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, intentionally broke the Legislature's rules by cutting off a filibuster attempt last month, a move that paved the way for the issue to win ballot approval in the Senate.

The hearing will not affect the ballot measure but could result in a formal reprimand for Harper if the committee upholds a complaint by Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Phoenix. The hearing must be held within five to 20 days.

The November ballot item is to define marriage as between one man and one woman in the state constitution — a distinction already spelled out in state law.

On the last night of the legislative session, Cheuvront and Sen. Paula Aboud, D-Tucson, were asking questions back and forth on a tax bill, trying to drag out discussion long enough so the marriage measure would not have the votes it needed. One crucial supporter was planning to board a plane, which would have left the marriage bill without the necessary votes.

Harper, who was chairing the session, interrupted the dialog and then recognized Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, who moved to table further debate on the tax item. That cleared the way for hours of angry debate before a vote to send the marriage measure to the ballot with the minimum 16 votes.

Cheuvront's complaint charges Harper illegally interrupted debate and conspired with Verschoor to take the floor.

On Monday, the committee chairman, Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, backed the hearing request, saying he wants to fully understand what happened.

"I want to take testimony from the participants and let the committee ask some questions and get some things answered," Tibshraeny said. "Today's vote is not on the evidence, or a guilty or innocent verdict." Harper attended Monday's hearing but left after the vote.

Democrats are troubled by conflicting statements made by Harper.

That night, Harper said he accidentally cleared the electronic board, which gave Verschoor the opportunity to interject. But in a signed statement to the committee last week, Harper justified his move and called it intentional. In a guest column in the Star this month, Harper said Aboud was "outwitted."

In an e-mailed statement after the hearing, Harper said comments were attributed to him Monday that he never made but didn't specify what comments.

"The facts are, Senators Aboud and Cheuvront did not have the right to retain the floor because they wandered off topic, asked each other questions rather than debating, and were repetitive," Harper wrote in the e-mail.

Committee members Robert Blendu, R-Litchfield Park, and Barbara Leff, R-Paradise, argued that if the move by Harper was a mistake, it shouldn't constitute an ethics violation and voted against an investigation.

"Are we going to get to the point where you make a mistake, I make a mistake — it's an ethics violation?" Blendu said.

"I do not relish going forward with the reprimand," Cheuvront said after Monday's decision. "It's important that we do have rules that we abide by."

Arizonans narrowly turned down a same-sex-marriage ban in 2006 that also banned civil unions and domestic-partnership benefits offered by local governments.

While the Arizona Court of Appeals has previously rejected a constitutional challenge to the law banning gay marriage, social conservatives say the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn that state's statutory prohibition on same-sex marriages means Arizona needs to more strictly define marriage.