“In 1870, as the transcontinental railroad and the prospects of open land, mining and industry brought more non-Mormons into the Utah Territory, new political parties formed. The Mormons gathered into the People’s Party. Non-Mormons participated in territorial politics as the Liberal Party. Idaho Senator Frederick Dubois sought to limit Mormon influence by taking on the easy target of plural marriage: “[We] were not nearly so much opposed to polygamy as we were to the political domination of the Church… We made use of polygamy.” Polygamy became illegal in the United States in 1862 when President Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. The U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-polygamy ruling in Reynolds v. United States in 1879 was the first high court ruling to take up the question of Free Exercise of Religion. In this case, they upheld the ban on plural marriage, arguing that religious beliefs are free from government regulation but religious-based acts are not. Some viewed it as an assault on First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Eight years later, the U.S. Government, in 1887, enacted Edmunds-Tucker Act that essentially legally dissolved the Church of the Latter-day Saints. “One of the provisions of the Edmunds–Tucker Act in 1887 was the repeal of women’s right to vote in Utah. The opposition of the majority of Utahans to this act was secured by a provision that required a test oath against polygamy. This was broad enough to include the majority of Latter-day Saints who were not directly involved in polygamy. All who would not swear this test oath were ineligible to vote, serve on juries, or hold most other government offices.”