Sovereign citizen movement
The sovereign citizen movement is a loose group of anti-government activists, conspiracy theorists, vexatious litigants, tax protesters and financial scammers found mainly in English-speaking common law countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Sovereign citizens have a pseudolegal belief system based on misinterpretations of common law, and claim not to be subject to any government statutes unless they consent to them. The movement appeared in the U.S. in the early 1970s and has since expanded to other countries; the similar freeman on the land movement emerged during the 2000s in Canada before spreading to other Commonwealth countries. Sovereign citizen ideas have also been incorporated by other fringe movements in the United States and abroad, such as the Reichsbürger in Germany and Austria. The FBI has called sovereign citizens "anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from the United States".
The sovereign citizen phenomenon is the main contemporary source of pseudolaw. Sovereign citizens believe that courts have no jurisdiction over people and that certain procedures and loopholes can make one immune to government laws and regulations. They regard most forms of taxation as illegitimate and reject Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, and vehicle registration. The movement may appeal to people facing financial or legal difficulties or wishing to resist perceived government oppression. As a result, it has grown significantly during times of economic or social crisis. Most schemes promoted by sovereign citizens aim to avoid paying taxes, ignore laws, eliminate debts, or extract money from the government. Sovereign citizen arguments have no basis in law and have never been successful in court.
American sovereign citizens claim that the United States federal government is illegitimate, and those outside the U.S. hold similar beliefs about their countries' governments. The movement can be traced to American far-right groups such as the Posse Comitatus and the constitutionalist wing of the militia movement. It was originally associated with White supremacy and antisemitism but now attracts people of various ethnicities, including a significant number of African Americans. The latter sometimes belong to self-declared "Moorish" sects.
Most sovereign citizens are not violent, but the methods the movement advocates are illegal. Sovereign citizens notably adhere to the fraudulent schemes promoted by the redemption "A4V" movement. Many have been found guilty of offenses such as tax evasion, hostile possession, forgery, threatening public officials, bank fraud, and traffic violations. Two of the most important crackdowns by U.S. authorities on sovereign citizen organizations were the 1996 case of the Montana Freemen and the 2018 sentencing of self-proclaimed judge Bruce Doucette and his associates.
Because some have engaged in armed confrontations with law enforcement, the FBI classifies "sovereign citizen extremists" as domestic terrorists. Terry Nichols, one of the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, subscribed to sovereign citizen ideology. In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, representatives of U.S. law enforcement ranked the risk of terrorism from the sovereign citizen movement higher than the risk from any other group. In 2015, the Australian New South Wales Police Force identified sovereign citizens as a potential terrorist threat.
History
Origin
The sovereign citizen movement originated from a combination of tax protester ideas, 1960s–70s radical and racist anti-government movements, and pseudolaw, which has existed in the U.S. since at least the 1950s. The movement's belief in the illegitimacy of federal income tax gradually expanded to challenging the legitimacy of the government.The concept of a "sovereign citizen" whose rights are unfairly denied appeared in 1971 within the Posse Comitatus as part of the teachings of Christian Identity minister William Potter Gale. The Posse Comitatus, whose name derived from the historical militias led by local sheriffs, was a far-right, anti-government movement that denounced income tax, debt-based currency, and debt collection as tools of Jewish control over the United States. The roots of the sovereign citizen movement were thus strongly associated with white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies. Gale's racist beliefs were far from unique, but he innovated by devising a "legal" philosophy about the government's illegitimacy. Posse Comitatus members used the term "sovereign citizens" to convey the idea that they were entitled to enforce their interpretation of the Constitution.
After originating in that particular group, the sovereign citizen concept went on to influence the broader tax protester and Christian Patriot movements. Until the 1990s, observers primarily classified the Posse Comitatus as a tax-protest movement rather than an outright far-right extremist group. The Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity, and militia movements did not fully overlap, but they shared members and influenced one another.
Developments
In the early 1980s, tax protester Gordon Kahl, a former Posse Comitatus member, helped radicalize sovereign citizens' anti-government rhetoric. Kahl considered the government not only illegitimate but actively hostile to Americans' interests. After he was killed in 1983 during a shootout with law enforcement, the movement considered him a martyr, which helped amplify his views.The movement garnered more support during the American farm crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s, which coincided with a general financial crisis in the U.S. and Canada. The farm crisis saw the rise of anti-government protesters selling sham debt relief programs, some of whom were associated with far-right groups. They included Roger Elvick, a member of a successor organization of the Posse Comitatus. Elvick conceived the redemption methods, a set of fraudulent debt and tax payment schemes that became part of sovereign citizen ideology.
As the Posse Comitatus movement evolved, its members created pseudolegal bodies that claimed to speak with the authority of "natural law" or "common law" and to supersede the government's legal system. The most common tactic of these "common law courts" was to issue false liens against their enemies' property.
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, one perpetrator of which adhered to sovereign citizen ideology, observers categorized the Posse Comitatus as far-right extremism, sidelining the tax protester aspect. Around the end of the decade, the term "Posse Comitatus" was supplanted by "sovereign citizen". This mirrored a change in the language adherents used, which reflected their increased focus on personal liberty secured through absolute ownership of personal property.
In 1996, the case of the Montana Freemen brought the sovereign citizen movement to public attention. The Montana Freemen were Christian Patriot sovereign citizens and direct ideological descendants of the Posse Comitatus: they used false liens to harass public officials and committed bank fraud with counterfeit checks and money orders. The group surrendered in June 1996 after 81 days of armed standoff with the FBI. Several members of the Montana Freemen received long prison sentences. The group's leader, LeRoy M. Schweitzer, died in prison in 2011.
Over time, the movement expanded beyond its original white nationalist environment to people of all backgrounds. By the 1990s, sovereign citizen arguments had been adopted by minority groups, notably the African American Moorish sovereign citizens. The Moorish sovereigns' beliefs derive, in part, from the Moorish Science Temple of America, which has condemned this sovereign citizen offshoot.
Since the 1990s, the number of African American sovereign citizens has increased substantially. Various Black sovereign citizen groups have appeared, some Islamic, others adhering to New Age philosophies. Sovereign citizen ideas have also been adopted by some groups within the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and various other fringe political or religious groups, such as black separatists and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
American pseudolaw became well-established by 2000. Notably, Elvick conceived the strawman theory around that time; it became a core sovereign citizen concept because it provided an overarching explanation for the movement's pseudolegal beliefs.
Spread
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, sovereign citizen ideology was introduced into Canada and then gradually into other countries as the advent of the Internet facilitated communication between people sharing the same ideas. One influential American figure who helped spread sovereign citizen ideology abroad was Winston Shrout, who held seminars in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.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.
File:Cliven & Ammon Bundy.jpg|thumb|Cliven and Ammon Bundy, two American activists who became associated with the sovereign citizen movement during the 2010s
Since the late 2000s, the sovereign citizen movement has significantly expanded in the U.S. due to the Great Recession and more specifically the subprime mortgage crisis. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers", with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges". According to another SPLC estimate, the number of sovereign citizen-influenced militia groups in the U.S. increased dramatically between 2008 and 2011, from 149 to 1,274, respectively.
Incidents such as the 2003 standoff in Abbeville, South Carolina, the 2007 Edward and Elaine Brown standoff, the 2010 West Memphis police shootings, the 2014 Bundy standoff, the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the 2016 shooting of Baton Rouge police officers, and the 2021 Wakefield standoff attracted significant media attention. In 2022, the perpetrator of the Waukesha Christmas parade attack brought further attention to the movement by using sovereign citizen arguments during his trial.
There is significant overlap between the sovereign citizen and QAnon movements. A sovereign citizen group known as the Oath Enforcers attracted QAnon and Donald Trump supporters into the movement after the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that the sovereign citizen movement was attracting a growing number of QAnon adherents, whose belief in the illegitimacy of the Biden administration is compatible with the sovereign citizens' broader anti-government views.
Videos of people attempting to use sovereign citizen-style arguments during traffic stops, in courtrooms, and in other public places are common on the Internet, where they are often considered a source of amusement. Researcher Christine Sarteschi has said that this may cause people to underestimate the movement's potential for violence and its links with criminal conduct. Several people charged with crimes such as murder or sexual assault have used sovereign citizen arguments as attempts to negate the court's jurisdiction over them. In 2025, Sarteschi argued that we must better understand why people become sovereign citizens, and noted that while the movement itself is nonviolent, deep mistrust of authority can lead sovereign citizens to commit acts of violence anyway.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the spread of the movement. Sovereign citizens have been associated with broader anti-mask and anti-vaccine activism and took part in protests over responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. An increase in sovereign citizens was observed in Australia and the United Kingdom during the pandemic. Several COVID-19-related incidents involving local sovereign citizens who refused to follow sanitary measures were also reported in Singapore. In June 2022, Sarteschi reported that the movement was rapidly expanding and could now be found in 26 countries.