Columbus Guardian, 1996

COLUMBUS, OHIO — They meet in church halls and living rooms, sometimes in groups of a dozen, sometimes in gatherings of several hundred. They call themselves the United Sovereigns of America, and they believe the federal government has no legitimate authority over them.

“I am a free man,” said one member at a recent meeting in a Columbus suburb. “I don’t need a driver’s license. I don’t need to pay income taxes. I don’t need to register my car. The Constitution doesn’t require any of that.”

The United Sovereigns are part of the sovereign citizen movement, a loosely organized collection of individuals and groups who believe they can “opt out” of the legal system by filing the right documents and using the right legal language.

The movement has roots in the Posse Comitatus of the 1970s and 1980s, which taught that county sheriffs were the highest legitimate law enforcement authority and that the income tax and Federal Reserve were unconstitutional. Today’s sovereign citizens have added new elements: the theory that birth certificates represent a financial instrument giving the government ownership of individuals, the idea that a “strawman” corporate entity is created in one’s name at birth, and elaborate rituals for “discharging” debt through the Treasury Department.

Ohio law enforcement officials say the sovereign citizen movement is growing rapidly in the state. Members have clogged county courthouses with filings, placed liens on the property of officials who have ruled against them, and in several cases driven without licenses, arguing they have a “right to travel.”

“We’re seeing this all over the state,” said one Franklin County sheriff’s deputy who deals regularly with sovereign citizens. “They’ve convinced themselves that if they just use the right magic words, they can make themselves invisible to the law.”

Most sovereign citizens are nonviolent, experts say, though the movement has produced some dangerous members. Several prominent domestic terrorists, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, have connections to sovereign citizen ideology.

“The vast majority are just people who are frustrated,” said Mark Pitcavage, a researcher who tracks extremist movements for the Anti-Defamation League. “They feel powerless and they’ve found a system that seems to give them power. The problem is the system is based on legal nonsense.”

At the United Sovereigns meeting, members swapped tips on avoiding traffic tickets, shared documents they claimed would exempt them from income taxes, and listened to a speaker explain the “redemption” process — a scheme in which individuals claim to have a Treasury account worth millions of dollars and attempt to draw on it to pay debts.

Courts have consistently rejected these theories, and several United Sovereigns members have faced criminal charges for filing false tax returns and fraudulent liens. But the prosecutions have not deterred the group.

“When they put you in jail for exercising your rights,” said one member, “that just proves the system is corrupt.”