Sovereign citizens believe they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. They use a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods to justify their beliefs and their activities, some of which are illegal or violent. Their rejection of legal documentation such as Social Security Numbers, drivers’ licenses, vehicle registration and other forms of government identification lead to frequent interactions with law enforcement.
Top Takeaways
In 2023, the sovereign citizens movement continued to flourish. The increase in disinformation around politics and health in recent years has fostered an environment where facts are challenged and conspiracy theories such as the ones perpetuated by sovereign citizens have grown in popularity and reach.
The demographics of the sovereign citizens movement’s membership have seen major change, which is skewing younger and more female than in earlier decades. Another change has been in the way the leaders and members identify, with many rejecting the term “sovereign citizen.” This label has negative connotations attached to it due to self-identified sovereign citizens committing crimes up to and including violence. In recent years, many of the larger sovereign citizen organizations began calling themselves “American State Nationals,” though their beliefs and activities remain largely the same.
Groups using the “American State Nationals” moniker grew the most in 2023. This included the American States Assembly, National Assembly, ASN Study Guide & University and American Meeting group. The first two groups teach members to fill out paperwork to supposedly become sovereign and to form assemblies, which are faux government structures run outside the U.S. government’s control that they believe will take the place of the official U.S. government at some point in the future. The other two organizations focus on training people how to fill out paperwork and participate in sovereign activities by offering expensive seminars, materials and merchandise that net the leaders a hefty profit.
Key Moments
On March 1, 2023, 25-year-old sovereign citizen Chase Allan was killed by police after he refused to comply with directions during a traffic stop in Farmington, Utah, including commands to get out of the vehicle. He tried to grab his loaded gun and managed to get it out of the holster before he was shot. Allan and his parents were all members of the sovereign citizen movement and called themselves American State Nationals.
Allan’s mother, Diane Allan, was stopped by law enforcement in 2022 for driving without vehicle registration or a license. She responded to her traffic stop by filing a petition against various Davis County entities and employees, including a justice court judge, two county attorneys, a current and former Farmington police chief and a Farmington police officer. In the filing, Diane Allan referred to herself as “one of the sovereign people of Utah.” When she went into court, her son Chase was beside her.
Diane was also an administrator for a social media channel related to the sovereign citizen group ASN Study Guide & University and an active member of their chats, according to Bobby Lawrence, the group’s co-leader. After Chase was killed, the group encouraged members to attend a vigil and reach out the Farmington, Utah, police department to share that Allan was an American State National and provide them with information about the “right to travel,” a common sovereign belief that the roads are free to travel without licenses or registration if they are not operating a vehicle for commercial purposes.
In July, the Davis County prosecutor filed his decision not to press charges against the officers related to Chase Allan’s death, stating: “There is no reasonable probability of prosecution. The officers had a reasonable, articulate and objectively verifiable belief that use of deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to themselves or others.”
Followers of ASN Study Guide & University faced another legal issue in April 2023. Co-leader David Straight and his wife, Bonnie Allen, were arrested in Texas. Straight was driving without legitimate license plates or vehicle registration. Allen had an outstanding warrant, resisted arrest and assaulted deputies, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. One of Allen’s charges was based on a 2015 incident where she brought a loaded gun into a Johnson County courthouse and tried to flee when a scanner showed it in her purse.
On May 5, 2023, Allen was sentenced to five years in prison for carrying a weapon in a prohibited place. Straight filed a “Emergency Writ of Habeas Corpus” on her behalf but was told that, as a non-attorney, he could not represent her in that manner.
Straight and Allen were also let go from their positions with a third sovereign citizen group, the Republic of Texas, which runs a fake government in Texas. In March 2023, David Straight was dismissed from his appointment as the Commander of the Texian Rangers of the Republic of Texas for selling license plates, which they later claimed made him a profit of $200,000. Additionally, he was teaching classes to “travelers” on “how to defend themselves against law enforcement officers when detained along the roadways.” Allen was also mailed a letter of termination. The Republic of Texas followed this up with an order to remove all references about Straight and Allen from materials, website and related businesses.
The Republic of Texas also faced additional drama. It started an internal investigation in August 2023 based on allegations of “unconstitutional acts” by their fake congress, a secret meeting by the group’s president, and issues with the group’s election.
A group in Hawaii related to the National Assembly sovereign citizen organization also claimed there was a coup from an allied group who stole their name, Honolulu County General Jural Assembly. This caused a schism with the national organization, and the chapter became the Hawaiian General Jural Assembly as a result.
The National Assembly’s original headquarters in Michigan also faced an alleged coup in 2023. On July 14, 2023, the group posted a notice to their website that read: “The Michigan General Jural Assembly has adjourned for the remainder of 2023 and will reconvene in 2024 due to an active coup from within. During this time any information or contact from what seems to be the MGLA is to be treated as invalid and ignored.”
What’s Ahead
Many leaders of sovereign citizen organizations have perfected their recruitment pitches and techniques, which makes an increase in sovereign seminar attendance very likely.
The sovereign practice of U.S. citizens filing paperwork they believe will separate them from the government in county clerk offices across the United States, along with posting notices in local newspapers about their sovereign status or the status of their assemblies, will also continue unabated, if the clerk offices and newspapers do not crack down on this conduct.
Sovereign Chase Allan’s death seems to have made an impact on the group with which his family was affiliated. Directly after Allan’s death, ASN co-leader Bobby Lawrence told his members in a video, “Do not get into a roadside court, don’t argue with the officer.” He directed them to take the ticket and warned that lower courts may not be aware of what they believe is the “right to travel.” This advice by Lawrence could lead to fewer sovereign altercations with the police, at least from members of ASN Study Guide & University and the participants of Lawrence’s many seminars.
Background
Sovereign Citizens often abuse the court system with indecipherable filings. When confronted, many of them lash out, retaliating through acts of paper terrorism and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence – usually directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns were filmed killing two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West Memphis, Arkansas.
The roots of the movement are racist and antisemitic. It was founded in 1971 by William Potter Gale, a former member of the John Birch Society who formed a group of antigovernment Christian Identity adherents who mistrusted state and federal officials. They believed that non-white people were not human, and that Jewish people were engaged in a satanic plot to take over the world. They identified as “Posse Comitatus,” which is Latin for “power of the county,” and centers on the idea that county sheriffs are the highest governmental authority.
Posse Comitatus is based on the Sheriffs Act of 1887, which allowed sheriffs to form a posse to assist in hunting down and arresting criminals. Potter’s Posse believed they served under common law (laws based on their interpretation of the Bible), rather than civil law (legitimate laws formed by the American legal system).
The activities of Potter’s Posse, many of them criminal, included refusal to pay taxes, filing bogus property liens and committing violence against public officials. These actions, which were established by Gale’s group, have become customary in today’s sovereign citizens movement. What has changed as the sovereign citizens movement has evolved is the white supremacist ideology that initially dominated it. Contemporary sovereign citizens hold varying racial ideologies and include a variety of people.
The Sovereign Belief System
The contemporary sovereign belief system is based on a decades-old conspiracy theory that the American government set up by the Founding Fathers under a common-law legal system was secretly replaced. They believe that the replacement government swapped common law for admiralty law or maritime law.
Some sovereigns believe this change occurred during the Civil War, while others blame the events of 1933, when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard. Either way, sovereigns who hold this view stake their lives and livelihoods on the idea that U.S. judges and lawyers, who they believe are foreign agents, know about this hidden government takeover but argue against it. These supposed foreign agents deny the sovereigns’ legal motions and filings out of treasonous loyalty to hidden and malevolent government forces.
For those sovereigns tracing the conspiracy back to 1933, they claim it all started when the U.S. dollar was no longer backed by gold but instead by the “full faith and credit” of the federal government. They claim the government has pledged its citizenry as collateral by selling their future earning capabilities to foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans. This sale, sovereign citizens claim, takes place at birth with the issuance of a birth certificate and the hospital advice to apply for a Social Security Number for the baby. Sovereigns say that the government then uses that birth certificate to set up a corporate trust in the baby’s name – a secret U.S. Treasury account – that it funds with amounts ranging from $600,000 to $20 million, depending on the particular variant of the sovereign belief system.
Sovereign citizens believe that by setting up this Treasury Direct Account (TDA), every newborn’s rights are split between those held by the flesh-and-blood baby and the ones assigned to his or her corporate shell account, evidenced, they claim, by the fact that most certificates use all capital letters to spell out a baby’s name – “JOHN DOE,” for example. They falsely attribute this all-capital version to the actual name of the corporate shell identity, also called a “straw man,” while “John Doe” without all caps is the baby’s “real,” flesh-and-blood name. The bogus belief continues that, as the child grows older, most of his legal documents will utilize capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver’s license, marriage license, car registration, criminal court records, cable TV bill and correspondence from the IRS all will pertain to his corporate shell identity, not his real, sovereign identity.
To separate from their corporate shells, sovereign citizens use a series of convoluted steps, such as filing documentation with their secretary of state’s office declaring themselves sovereign, signing it with red blood or ink thumbprints, and then having their new sovereign identity published in a newspaper.
To tap into the secret treasury account that they believe exists, they file a series of complex, legal-sounding documents. For decades, sovereigns have attempted to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of forms and paperwork. The only touted success stories are from sovereigns who were in fact committing fraud against the government or private companies by creating counterfeit or fraudulent and fictitious documents. These sovereigns are often prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
There is no central leadership for the movement. Instead, there is a rotating group of nationwide figures and local leaders with individualized views on sovereign citizen ideology and techniques. Their recommendations often include tax evasion, adverse possession (squatting on a property that does not belong to them), or ignoring laws regarding driver’s licenses, vehicle registration or license plate possession. They base these activities on their belief that “free” men and women, as they call themselves, are not bound by the relevant laws. As part of their belief system, sovereigns assert they are traveling, not driving, since they are not transporting commercial goods or paying passengers. Those who are attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two or visit one of the thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and choose how to act on what they have learned.
Paper Terrorism
The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal sovereign arguments. For example, Donna Lee Wray – the common-law wife of Jerry Kane, who was half of a duo that was recorded killing two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, before he was killed by police, in 2010 – was involved in a protracted legal battle in 2010 over having to pay a dog-licensing fee. She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor decided to drop the case.
Similarly, when sovereigns are angry with government officials, their revenge most often takes the form of “paper terrorism.” Sovereigns file retaliatory, bogus property liens that may not be discovered by their targets until they attempt to sell or mortgage their property or take out a loan. Historically, these liens can be for millions, billions or even quadrillions of dollars. These extremists bury courts in endlessly large paper filings filled with language developed by their movement, trying to find the right combination of words, punctuation, paper, ink color and timing to get out of following the law.
Sovereign citizens have also perpetrated a number of illegal housing-related, money-making schemes, fraudulently occupying and deeding empty homes to themselves. They’ve convinced homeowners in foreclosure to transfer over their property titles to them using “quit claim deeds” by falsely claiming they can stop the foreclosures and give the property back for a fee. Foreclosures continue on those properties, and the end result is tenants still lose their homes, and they’re also out the money they paid to the sovereign citizen to prevent it from happening. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has recovered tens of millions of dollars from these sorts of sovereign citizen scammers prosecuted for their crimes.
Sovereign citizens often file fake tax forms that are designed to ruin an enemy’s credit rating and cause them to be audited by the IRS. Starting in the mid-1990s, states began to pass laws specifically aimed at these paper-terrorism tactics.
In April 2017, the state of Colorado cracked down heavily on sovereign citizen activity by charging the “Colorado Eight” with racketeering after they ran their own common law courts targeting state and municipal court judges, prosecutors, sheriffs and other public officials. Members of the Colorado Eight were known for holding faux trials in Burns, Oregon, that put public officials on trial related to the antigovernment Bundy family’s organized occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Members Bruce Doucette, Stephen Nalty and Steven Byfield were sentenced to 22 to 38 years in prison.
On July 31, 2021, sovereign citizen Shawna Cox was arrested in Kane County, Utah, for failing to appear in court over traffic infractions. At her court hearing, Cox attempted to plead the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments and claimed her case was currently being heard and subject to the common-law courts. Her supporters, including antigovernment activist Cliven Bundy, stood outside the courthouse protesting her arrest. At one appearance Cox accused the court, judge and Kane County officers of criminal acts, obstruction of justice, fraud and extortion. Cox was aided by the sovereign citizen group Statewide Common Law Grand Jury, who filed 24 total objections to what they called an “unlawful status hearing.
2023 sovereign citizens groups
*Asterisk denotes headquarters
Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey State Republic
New Jersey
American Common Law Academy
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
American Meeting Group
Austin, Texas
American States Assembly
Arizona
Los Angeles, California
Nevada County, California
Colorado
Hamden, Connecticut
Atlantic Beach, Florida
Clearwater, Florida
Pasco County, Florida
Sarasota County, Florida
Lithonia, Georgia
Patoka, Indiana
Stanford, Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Clearwater, Minnesota
Dekalb, Missouri
Las Vegas, Nevada
New Hampshire
New York, New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Texas
Mount Pleasant, Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
America’s Remedy
Charlotte, North Carolina
ASN Study Guide & University (American State Nationals)
California
Illinois
Minnesota
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Virginia
The California Assembly
Orange County, California
Monterey County, California
Riverside County, California
San Francisco, California*
Colorado State Assembly
Colorado*
Jefferson County, Colorado
Embassy of Heaven
Stayton, Oregon
Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah
Richwood, Louisiana
The Foundation
Walnut, California*
Freedom Bound International
Emery, South Dakota
Freedom From Government
Gabbs, NevadaFreedom Yell
Ozark, Alabama
Hawaii General Assembly
Hawaii*
HISAdvocates.org
Costa Mesa, California
March to Exodus
Elkton, Maryland
Moorish Science Temple of America 1928
Lithonia, Georgia
National Assembly
Fairbanks, Alaska*
Riverside, California
Florida
Georgia
Honolulu, Hawaii
Maui County, Hawaii
Idaho
Kentucky
Michigan
Perry County, Missouri
Missouri
Montana
Cherokee County, North Carolina
North Carolina
Wisconsin
Natural Law Hawaii
Hawaii
National Liberty Alliance
Solano County, California
Hawaii
Hyde Park, New York*
Occupied Forces Hawaii Army
Hawaii
People’s Bureau of Investigation
Oswego, Illinois
R.V. Bey Publications
Pleasantville. New Jersey
Reign of the Heavens Society
Ontario, California
Florida*
Greenville, South Carolina
Republic for the United States of America
Dothan, Alabama
Fullerton, California
Republic of Texas
Bastrop County, Texas
Rise of the Moors
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Sovereign Filing Solutions
Morrow, Georgia
Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry
San Diego, California
Statewide Common Law Grand Jury
Arcadia, Florida
Team Law
Grand Junction, Colorado
United States of America Republic Government
Alabama
Chicago, Illinois*
Merrillville, Indiana
Minnesota
We the People for Constitutional Sheriffs
Iowa