What Are Sovereign Citizens and Why Does the FBI Consider Some Threats?

On May 20, 2010, police officer Bill Evans stopped a minivan with strange Ohio license plates on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark. Jerry Kane, 45, was driving. Sergeant Brandon Paudert arrived on the scene to provide backup.

As Evans questioned Jerry, 16-year-old Joseph Kane, Jerry’s son, took an AK-47 assault rifle from the van and started to fire at Evans. Joseph next turned his weapon on Paudert, who was hit even as he tried to shield himself with his vehicle. The Kanes then raced off in their van, leaving Paudert on the road and Evans in a ditch.

Evans had been shot 14 times; Paudert 11. Both died from their wounds. About 90 minutes later, police tracked the Kanes to a Walmart parking lot in West Memphis. After a wildlife officer rammed his vehicle into the minivan to keep the Kanes from fleeing, another shootout took place. Two more officers were wounded, and both Kanes were killed.

The traffic stop took such a deadly turn because the Kanes considered themselves “sovereign citizens” who believed laws—including traffic stops—didn’t apply to them and felt they had the right to fight back. The incident inspired the 2025 movie Sovereign.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that 300,000 people living in the United States identify as sovereign citizens. The group's beliefs and practices have even put them on the FBI's radar as potential domestic terrorists.

Sovereign citizens aren’t part of a hierarchical movement with national leaders. There are different subsets of sovereign citizens—the two main ones being the original movement that began in the 1970s and a Moorish offshoot dating back to the 1990s. But they all share one overarching belief: they don’t need to recognize federal, state or local law.

Traditional sovereign citizens have come to internalize that a legitimate common law system was replaced by admiralty law in the United States, rendering the current government illegitimate. Some think this happened with the constitutional amendments that followed the Civil War, others maintain it occurred when the country left the gold standard in 1933.

Meanwhile, some Moorish sovereign citizens view themselves as not being bound by U.S. law because they operate under the misconception that Moors were the first people to live in America and therefore have special privileges. Other Moorish sovereign citizens allege that a treaty signed by the United States and Morocco in the 1780s grants them legal immunity.

Sovereign citizens often embrace the freedom of not being bound by laws that others obey. They claim a “right to travel” that lets them drive without needing a license, car registration or insurance.

Sovereign citizens also don’t recognize everyday financial obligations like mortgages, child support and taxes. The idea of escaping these obligations is appealing, particularly for people in dire financial straits, and has resulted in some sovereign citizens engaging in financial scams and money laundering.

There's also a common tenet, known as The Redemption Theory, among sovereign citizens that the U.S. Treasury holds a secret account for each U.S. citizen. By filing specific paperwork in the right order, they think it’s possible for sovereign citizens to access this money, which they claim ranges from $600,000 to $20 million.

Seminars are a common way for individuals to learn about sovereign citizenship. Jerry had been teaching sovereign citizen techniques to avoid foreclosure prior to the Kanes' drive through West Memphis.

YouTube videos and other online sources also disseminate sovereign citizens’views, and new audiences in recent years have included anti-vaxxers, QAnon adherents and supporters of President Donald Trump. And though sovereign citizens don’t acknowledge the judicial system, some have been incarcerated and spread their beliefs by talking to people in prison.

As the FBI noted in 2011, challenging the ideology of some sovereign citizens can quickly lead to violence. People who consider the government to be illegitimate can feel they have permission to strike back and even kill, as seen at the fatal traffic stop in West Memphis. Other traffic stops have also resulted in deaths and injuries to law enforcement. Sovereign citizens may act violently toward any government officials trying to do their jobs.

In May 2021, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security released a report assessing the risks posed by sovereign citizen violent extremism. Of 85 U.S. domestic terrorism events in 2015-19 that the FBI considered significant, 13 were conducted by sovereign citizen violent extremists. These included a woman barricading herself in her home to avoid being served with a warrant and three people who conspired to break someone out of jail and kidnap a law enforcement officer and a judge.

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which resulted in 168 deaths and was the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, also has a connection to sovereign citizens. Terry Nichols, who helped Timothy McVeigh carry out the bombing, followed sovereign citizen ideology.