Samuel D. Davis, a resident of Oneida County, Idaho, was convicted in the territorial district court of swearing falsely after taking the voter's oath.

[2][3] Davis appealed his conviction via a habeas corpus writ, claiming that the Idaho law requiring the oath violated his right to the free exercise of his religion as a member of the LDS Church.

He went on to echo Reynolds v. United States (1878): "However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country, passed with reference to actions regarded by general consent as properly the subjects of punitive legislation."

Following decades of federal efforts to end the practice of polygamy by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Davis v. Beason decision may have been a significant consideration which helped convince LDS prophet and president Wilford Woodruff that the time had come to stop sanctioning additional plural marriages, as announced in his Manifesto of September, 1890.

"[3] 106 years later, in Romer v. Evans (1996), the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Colorado constitutional initiative that prevented any jurisdiction from protecting homosexual citizens from discrimination.