Sovereign citizen movement

The sovereign citizen movement (also SovCit movement or SovCits)^[1] is a loose group of anti-government activists, litigants, tax protesters, financial scammers, and conspiracy theorists based mainly in the United States. Sovereign citizens have their own pseudolegal belief system based on misinterpretations of common law and claim to not be subject to any government statutes unless they consent to them.^[2][3] The movement appeared in the United States 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 such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.^[4] The FBI describes sovereign citizens as "anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from the United States".^[5]

The sovereign citizen phenomenon is one of the main contemporary sources of pseudolaw. Sovereign citizens believe that courts have no jurisdiction over people and that the use of 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.^[6] They also regard most forms of taxation as illegitimate and reject Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, and vehicle registration.^[7] 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.^[8] Most schemes promoted by sovereign citizens aim to avoid paying taxes, ignore laws, eliminate debts, or extract money from the government.^[3] Sovereign citizen arguments have no basis in law and have never been successful in any court.^[3][6]

American sovereign citizens claim that the United States federal government is illegitimate.^[3][9] Sovereign citizens outside of the U.S. hold similar beliefs about the government of their own countries. The movement can be traced back to American far-right groups such as the Posse Comitatus and the constitutionalist wing of the militia movement.^[10] While the sovereign citizen movement was originally associated with white supremacism and antisemitism, it now attracts people of various ethnicities, including a significant number of African Americans.^[3] The latter sometimes belong to self-declared Moorish sects.^[11]

The majority of sovereign citizens are not violent.^[2][12] However, the methods advocated by the movement are certainly illegal. Sovereign citizens notably adhere to the fraudulent schemes promoted by the redemption "A4V" movement. 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][5][13] Two of the most important crackdowns by U.S. authorities on sovereign citizen organizations have been the 1996 case of the Montana Freemen and the 2018 sentencing of self-proclaimed judge Bruce Doucette and his associates.^[14]

Because some have engaged in armed confrontations with law enforcement,^[2][15] the FBI classifies "sovereign citizen extremists" as domestic terrorists.^[16] Terry Nichols, one of the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, subscribed to a variation of sovereign citizen ideology.^[13] 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, including Islamic extremists, militias, racist skinheads, neo-Nazis, and radical environmentalists.^[17][18] In 2015, the Australian New South Wales Police Force identified sovereign citizens as a potential terrorist threat.^[19]