What is the legislation passed under Arthur's administration designed to prevent the Mormons of Utah from having more than one wife called?

Answer 1

The Edmunds Act, also known as the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, is a United States federal statute, signed into law on March 23, 1882, by President Chester Arthur which made polygamy a felony. The act is named after George Edmunds who was a U.S. Senator of Vermont. The Edmunds Act also prohibited "bigamous" or "unlawful cohabitation" (a misdemeanor), because proving that marriages had actually occurred was exceedingly difficult especially since LDS polygamous wives almost always refused to testify against their husbands. Rather, they were charged with bigamous cohabitation, a misdemeanor created by the Edmunds Act (1882). Proving cohabitation was easy enough, and over 1,300 Latter-day Saints were jailed as "cohabs" in the 1880s.

The act both reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act and revoked polygamists' right to vote, barred them from jury service, and prohibited them from holding any political office. The Edwards Act restrictions were enforced regardless of whether an individual was actually practicing polygamy, or merely stated a belief in the LDS doctrine of plural marriage without actually participating in it. In the Idaho Territory a test oath adopted in 1885 based on this law was used to ban all Mormons (and former Mormons) from voting because of the Church's position on polygamy.

A claim was made that the law violated the constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws because it punished polygamists for marriages solemnized before the law was passed. The Supreme Court ruled, in Murphy v. Ramsey that the statute was not ex post facto because convicts were charged for their continued cohabitation, not for the prior illegal marriage. Some modern scholarship suggests the law may be unconstitutional for being in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution, although the Supreme Court has yet to agree with this assertion. The portions of the law barring those who believe in polygamy but not practicing it from voting, jury service, and public office have since been deemed unenforceable if not unconstitutional.