[1] Quill modified an earlier court decision, National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Illinois, which dealt with a state imposing the duty of use tax collection on a mail order reseller.

Quill sold office equipment and stationery in North Dakota by using catalogs, flyers, advertisements in national periodicals, and telephone calls.

In National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Illinois,[4] the Court had held that a business whose only contacts with the taxing state are by mail or by common carrier lacks the "substantial nexus" required under the Dormant Commerce Clause.

[6] The soundness of the Quill decision has been questioned by legal scholars and judges in the twenty-first century as online sales have largely escaped taxation to the detriment of brick-and-mortar stores and state and local treasuries.

[7] In a related 2015 Supreme Court case Direct Marketing Ass'n v. Brohl,[2] Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his concurrence that the Quill decision had a "tenuous nature", that there was "serious, continuing injustice faced by Colorado and many other States" of being able to collect sales taxes only from brick-and-mortar stores, and offered "it is unwise to delay any longer a reconsideration of the Court's holding in Quill".

This led to several states to draft and purposely enact "kill Quill" laws to collect sales taxes for out-of-state purchases as to create the necessary legal vehicle to take to the Supreme Court.

In October 2017, the state of South Dakota filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to "abrogate Quill's sales-tax-only, physical-presence requirement".

[7]: 3  South Dakota argued that Quill should be overturned and that the case satisfied the Supreme Court's criteria for declining to maintain its previous ruling under the doctrine of stare decisis.