Phil Boots

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Phillip “Phil” L. Boots is an American politician from Indiana. A Republican, he served in the Indiana Senate, representing the 23rd District from 2006 to 2022. Boots graduated from New Market High School and Milligan College. He owns Boots Bros. Oil Co., Inc., which operates convenience stores in central Indiana, and he previously served as a Montgomery County commissioner before joining the state Senate.

In the Senate, Boots proposed eliminating the board of county commissioners for all of Indiana’s 91 counties in 2008. He cosponsored civil forfeiture reform in 2017 and was the sole member of the Public Policy Committee to vote against the hate crimes bill in 2019, while also being the only Republican to join Democrats in voting against a bill to ban dilation and evacuation abortion in 2019. In 2015, he sponsored legislation to legalize low-stakes video gambling terminals in Indiana bars and truck stops.

On social issues, Boots voted in favor of adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the Indiana Constitution in 2011, but voted against the proposed ban in 2014. In 2013, he introduced a “nullification” bill that would have allowed the Indiana General Assembly to declare federal laws unconstitutional and would have aimed to render the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in Indiana. The doctrine of nullification was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron (1958), and the ACA was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.

In 2014, Boots proposed an amendment to allow religious discrimination in hiring, which drew strong objections from Democrats. He sponsored legislation in 2016 to block local governments from requiring employers to give advance notice of employees’ hours, and in 2017 to block local “ban the box” ordinances. In 2018, as chairman of the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee, Boots blocked an equal-pay bill from receiving a hearing.