Sovereign citizen movement

Sovereign citizens believe that courts have no jurisdiction over people and that certain procedures (such as writing specific phrases on bills they do not want to pay) and loopholes can make one immune to government laws and regulations.

Many sovereign citizens have been found guilty of offenses such as tax evasion, hostile possession, forgery, threatening public officials, bank fraud, and traffic violations.

[3][9] The Posse Comitatus was a far-right anti-government movement[3] that denounced the income tax, debt-based currency, and debt collection as tools of Jewish control over the United States.

[22] After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, one perpetrator of which adhered to sovereign citizen ideology, observers categorized the Posse Comitatus as far-right extremism rather than a tax protester movement.

The Montana Freemen were Christian Patriot sovereign citizens and direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus:[9] they used false liens to harass public officials[27] and committed bank fraud with counterfeit checks and money orders.

[20] One influential American "guru" who helped spread sovereign citizen ideology abroad was Winston Shrout, who held seminars in Canada (until he was banned from the country), Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

[33] In Canada, sovereign citizen beliefs mixed with local tax protester concepts during the 2000s and gave birth to an offshoot, the freeman on the land movement, which eventually spread to other Commonwealth countries.

[13] As of the 1990s, several hundred people involved in "common law courts" operated by sovereign citizens or, more broadly, by the Patriot movement have been arrested for crimes such as fraud, impersonating police, intimidating or threatening officials, and in some cases, outright violence.

Some of the most common ones are postage stamps and thumbprints on documents, and the addition of punctuation (dashes, hyphens, colons or commas) to one's name, which sovereign citizens believe has a legal effect.

Some sovereign citizens use references to nonexistent "Republics" or to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), variations on the flag of the United States, or religious symbols such as that of the Vatican, which are thought to establish "sovereignty".

[56] The movement has no defining text, established doctrine, or centralized leadership,[8][64] but there are common themes, generally implying that the legitimate government and legal system have been somehow replaced and that the current authorities are illegitimate.

[26] This leads them to believe that U.S. judges and lawyers are actually agents of a foreign power,[3] typically thought to be the United Kingdom: one pseudolegal conspiracy theory claims that bar is an acronym for "British Accreditation Registry".

According to this theory, people are tricked into this contract by various methods, including Social Security numbers, fishing licenses, or ZIP Codes: thus, avoiding their use means immunity from government authority.

[65] Adherents of the "American State National" concept believe that, through a specific procedure, they can renounce federal citizenship, make themselves immune from jurisdiction and arrest, avoid the IRS, and rescind voting registrations, marriages, or birth certificates.

In March 2023, Chase Allan, a man who subscribed to this notion and used a false passport and an illegal license plate, was shot dead by police at a traffic stop in Utah during a confrontation with officers over his refusal to show an identification document.

[44] It is common for sovereign citizen "gurus" to earn money by selling their followers standard documents such as template filings, scripts to recite at court appearances, or other "quick-fix" solutions to legal problems.

[85] Sovereign citizens use a variety of fraudulent schemes, including filing false securities, to avoid paying taxes, get "refunds" from the government, or eliminate their debts and mortgages.

Saussy issued these "certificates" primarily as a form of protest, but sovereign citizens have been using false "promissory notes", "bills of exchange", "coupons", "bonds", or "sight drafts" to pay taxes, purchase properties, or fight foreclosures.

[10] Sovereign citizens may challenge the laws, rules, or sentences they disagree with by engaging in the practice known as paper terrorism, which involves filing complaints with legal documents that may be bogus or simply misused.

[112] Defendant can call himself a "public minister" and "private attorney general", he may file "mandatory judicial notices" citing all his favorite websites, he can even address mail to the "Washington Republic".

[121][122]In 2021, Pauline Bauer, a Pennsylvania restaurant owner facing charges for participating in the Capitol riot,[123] used a sovereign citizen line of defense by claiming to be a "self-governed individual"[111] and a "Free Living Soul"[93] and thus immune to prosecution.

[136][137] Author Richard Abanes writes that sovereign citizens fail to sufficiently examine the context of the case law they cite, and ignore adverse evidence, such as Federalist No.

[140] Heather Ann Tucci-Jarraf, a licensed lawyer who had been at one point a state prosecutor, eventually joined the sovereign citizen movement: she built an online following as a "guru" and advocated the use of redemption methods to reclaim one's alleged secret fund from the banking system and the Federal Reserve.

[95] Winston Shrout, an influential sovereign citizen "guru" based in Oregon, who advocated tax resistance and redemption/A4V schemes, issued hundreds of fake "bills of exchange" for himself and others, and eventually mailed to a bank one quadrillion dollars in counterfeit securities supposedly to be honored by the Treasury.

[64] One common response to this claim from U.S. law enforcement is that, while anyone is free to "travel" by foot, by bike or even by horse, operating a motor vehicle is a complex activity that requires training and licensure.

[158] Colorado prosecutors commented that through this verdict, they wished to send a message nationally to sovereign citizens and remind them that threats against local government officials would not be tolerated.

While arguments specific to the history and laws of the United States are not used (except inadvertently, by litigants who use poorly adapted U.S. material),[98] many concepts have been incorporated or adopted by individuals and groups in English-speaking Commonwealth countries.

[98][71] In 2024 lawyer Naomi Arbabi resigned her license after being suspended by the Law Society of British Columbia for filing a lawsuit dismissed as frivolous making use of pseudo-legal arguments like those of the sovereign citizen movement.

[44] The Common Law Court website, one of the main UK sovereign citizen resources, has for a time supported an impostor who claimed to be the rightful heir to the British throne.

[222][223] It gained further traction in the middle of 2023, when sovereign citizen movement followers tried to interrupt multiple court proceedings involving disseminators of COVID-19 and Russo-Ukrainian War disinformation, demanding that the judges "identify" themselves.