When the term “sovereign citizen” gets thrown around in a courtroom, it rarely comes with a definition. Instead, it functions as a label designed to discredit the litigant before anyone examines the substance of their arguments. Courts have acknowledged this problem directly:

“While Plaintiff may espouse views that are commonly attributed to the ‘sovereign citizen’ movement, courts must not dismiss such claims outright without addressing the substance.”
Griffin v. U.S. Bank, No. 5:15-cv-00112, 2015 WL 1470126, at *4 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 31, 2015)

“Courts must avoid using the term ‘sovereign citizen’ as a basis for summary dismissal, as it may lead to prejudice and violates the fundamental right to be heard.”
United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753, 767 (7th Cir. 2011)

“Although courts may disagree with litigants who espouse nontraditional legal arguments, the use of pejorative or political labels does not substitute for legal analysis.”
United States v. Davis, 793 F.3d 712, 720 (7th Cir. 2015)

So what do you actually do when opposing counsel or even the court deploys this term against you? One approach uses the Federal Rules of Evidence to turn the label into a defined legal term that works in your favor rather than against you.

The Strategy: Define the Undefined Term Under Rule of Evidence 301

Rule of Evidence 301 governs presumptions in civil cases. When a presumption is established and goes unrebutted, it stands as operative fact. The strategy here is straightforward: if the term “sovereign citizen” enters the proceeding, accept it while simultaneously providing its legal definition, drawn from binding Supreme Court precedent. If the opposing party fails to rebut that definition with evidence, it becomes a stipulated fact for the case.

This accomplishes two things at once. First, it removes the pejorative sting from the label by grounding it in actual case law. Second, it forces the opposing side to either accept a definition that affirms your standing or expend effort rebutting it with contrary authority.

The Congressional Definition: House Joint Resolution 437 (1940)

Before reaching for Supreme Court precedent, consider that Congress itself defined the term. On May 3, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed House Joint Resolution 437 into law (Public Resolution No. 67, 54 Stat. 178). The preamble reads:

“Whereas it is desirable that the sovereign citizens of our Nation be prepared for the responsibilities and impressed with the significance of their status in our self-governing Republic: Therefore be it Resolved…”

Read that again. The 76th Congress of the United States, in binding statutory language published in the Statutes at Large, used the phrase “sovereign citizens” to describe the people of this nation. Not a fringe pamphlet. Not an internet forum. Congress.

The resolution designated the third Sunday in May as “I Am An American Day” and directed that civil, educational, and judicial authorities cooperate in a “continuous effort to dignify and emphasize the significance of citizenship.” Section 2 specifically instructed judges to address newly naturalized citizens on “the form and genius of our Government and the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.”

This matters for three reasons:

1. It is statutory authority. HJR 437 was enrolled, signed, and published at 54 Stat. 178. It is not dicta, not a concurrence, not a dissenting footnote. It is Congress speaking.
2. It predates the pejorative by decades. The modern “sovereign citizen movement” label did not emerge until the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1940, Congress used the term in its plain, constitutional meaning: citizens who are sovereign, the self-governing people of a republic.
3. It pairs sovereign citizenship with civic duty, not defiance. The resolution explicitly ties the term to “responsibilities,” “opportunities,” and the instruction of future citizens in the governance of their own country. When a court uses “sovereign citizen” as a pejorative, it is repurposing a term that Congress defined as a civic honor.

When a judge or opposing counsel deploys the “sovereign citizen” label, the response is simple:

“That term was defined by Congress itself in House Joint Resolution 437 of 1940, describing ‘the sovereign citizens of our Nation’ and ‘their status in our self-governing Republic.’ The resolution is published at 54 Stat. 178. I accept the term as Congress defined it.”

This forces a choice: either accept the Congressional definition, or argue that Congress was wrong about its own terminology. Neither option favors dismissal.

The Definition: “Sovereign” + “Citizen” in Supreme Court Precedent

The term “sovereign citizen” is a compound of two words that the Supreme Court has defined separately and together across multiple cases. The foundational definition comes from Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857):

The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty.

The operative aspect of Dred Scott regarding who could achieve citizenship based on race was overturned by the 14th Amendment. But that is irrelevant to the definition above because it describes State citizenship, not “U.S. citizenship” as created by the 14th Amendment. The definition of State citizens as “the sovereign people” remains intact and has never been overruled.

Sovereignty Defined: Yick Wo v. Hopkins

Justice Stanley Matthews provided the clearest articulation of sovereignty in the American system in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886):

Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power.

Note the critical distinction: sovereignty is collective, residing in “the people” as a body. Individual sovereignty is then enjoyed through the collective as a constituent member of that sovereign body. This is not an assertion of being above the law. It is a recognition that “the people” are the source of the law, and government operates as their delegated agent.

Two Citizenships: State Citizens vs. U.S. Citizens

The legal foundation beneath this entire approach rests on a distinction that most modern practitioners overlook: the American constitutional system created two distinct classes of citizenship, and the 14th Amendment did not merge them.

State Citizenship: The Original Class

The Constitution references State citizenship in three separate provisions:

Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 grants federal judicial power over cases “between Citizens of different States” and “between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 provides: “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”

The 11th Amendment restricts judicial power so it “shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”

Prior to the 14th Amendment, there was technically no such thing as a standalone “citizen of the United States.” Justice Solomon Heydenfeldt stated this plainly in Ex Parte Knowles, 5 Cal. 301-307 (1855):

In examining the form of our government, it might be correctly said that there is no such thing as a citizen of the United States. But constant usage, arising from convenience and perhaps necessity, and dating from the formation of the Confederacy, has given substantial existence to the idea which the term conveys. A citizen of any one of the States of the Union is held to be and called a citizen of the United States, although technically and abstractly there is no such thing. To conceive a citizen of the United States who is not a citizen of some one of the States, is totally foreign to the idea, and inconsistent with the proper construction and common understanding of the expression as used in the Constitution, which must be deduced from its various other provisions. The object then to be attained, by the exercise of the power of naturalization, was to make citizens of the respective States.

U.S. Citizenship: The 14th Amendment Class

The “citizen of the United States” as a standalone legal status was born from the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was then constitutionalized as the 14th Amendment to make it harder to repeal. Understanding why requires tracing the terminology.

In Dred Scott, there was a clear distinction between “people” (from the Preamble’s “We the People,” defined as white citizens of the States) and “persons” (from the Slave Trade Clause, referring to those unable to achieve State citizenship). The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was written while Dred Scott was still operative law, which is why it specifically uses the term “persons.” The 14th Amendment carries this same terminology forward.

The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) clarified all of this in detail, establishing that the 14th Amendment created a new class of national citizenship distinct from State citizenship, with its own separate set of privileges and immunities.

The Distinction Confirmed: Bradwell v. State

The day after Slaughter-House was decided (April 14, 1873), Justice Samuel Freeman Miller confirmed in Bradwell v. State, 83 U.S. 130 (1873) that a white State citizen could not invoke the 14th Amendment at all:

As regards the provision of the Constitution that citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, the plaintiff in her affidavit has stated very clearly a case to which it is inapplicable.

The protection designed by that clause, as has been repeatedly held, has no application to a citizen of the State whose laws are complained of. If the plaintiff was a citizen of the State of Illinois, that provision of the Constitution gave her no protection against its courts or its legislation.

Justice Ward Hunt, one of the five Justices in agreement in Slaughter-House, elaborated further in United States v. Anthony (the Susan B. Anthony case):

The fourteenth amendment creates and defines citizenship of the United States. It had long been contended, and had been held by many learned authorities, and had never been judicially decided to the contrary, that there was no such thing as a citizen of the United States, except as that condition arose from citizenship of some state. No mode existed, it was said, of obtaining a citizenship of the United States, except by first becoming a citizen of some state.

After creating and defining citizenship of the United States, the fourteenth amendment provides, that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” This clause is intended to be a protection, not to all our rights, but to our rights as citizens of the United States only; that is to rights existing or belonging to that condition or capacity. The expression, citizen of a state, used in the previous paragraph, is carefully omitted here.

The rights of citizens of the state, as such, are not under consideration in the fourteenth amendment. They stand as they did before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and are fully guaranteed by other provisions.

Van Valkenburg v. Brown: The Plain Statement

Perhaps the most direct articulation of this distinction comes from California Chief Justice William T. Wallace in Van Valkenburg v. Brown, 43 Cal. 43 (1872):

No white person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, or born without those limits, and subsequently naturalized under their laws, owes the status of citizenship to the recent amendments to the Federal Constitution. The history and aim of the Fourteenth Amendment is well known, and the purpose had in view in its adoption well understood. That purpose was to confer the status of citizenship upon a numerous class of persons domiciled within the limits of the United States, who could not be brought within the operation of the naturalization laws because native born, and whose birth, though native, had at the same time left them without the status of citizenship. These persons were not white persons, but were, in the main, persons of African descent, who had been held in slavery in this country, or, if having themselves never been held in slavery, were the native-born descendants of slaves.

Application: What This Means in Practice

When someone calls you a “sovereign citizen” in court, this framework lets you respond with precision rather than defensiveness. The definition applies to you as a free man or woman who is a citizen of your State. It would not extend to any business entity you operate, such as a sole proprietorship, which is defined as a “person” under 8 USC 1101(b)(3) and is a U.S. citizen under 8 USC 1401(a) and 8 USC 1101(a)(22)(A).

If the term “sovereign citizen” were applied to the business entity, that would constitute fraud upon the court. A U.S. citizen has never had access to the 9th or 10th Amendments through the Incorporation Doctrine cases. There is no sovereignty, collective or individual, enjoyed by a U.S. citizen. The U.S. citizen class was originally created to federally protect released slaves from State abuses (particularly in the southern States), then was expanded to include legal fictions in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394 (1886).

Template: Presumptive Definition Under Rule of Evidence 301

The following is a template for entering this definition into the record. If it goes unrebutted with evidence, it becomes a stipulated fact for the case:

Updated Template Language (incorporating HJR 437):

“For the record, the term ‘sovereign citizen’ was defined by the 76th Congress of the United States in House Joint Resolution 437, signed May 3, 1940, and published at 54 Stat. 178. Congress described ‘the sovereign citizens of our Nation’ and ‘their status in our self-governing Republic.’ This definition is consistent with Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, wherein Chief Justice Taney defined citizens as ‘the sovereign people’ and ‘constituent members of this sovereignty.’ I accept both the Congressional and judicial definitions of this term as a rebuttable presumption under Federal Rule of Evidence 301, applicable to my status as a State citizen. Should any party seek to apply a different definition, the burden of production shifts to that party to rebut this presumption with contrary authority of equal or greater weight.”

Key Cases Referenced

• H.J. Res. 437, Pub. Res. No. 67, 54 Stat. 178 (1940) — Congressional definition of “sovereign citizens of our Nation” and “their status in our self-governing Republic”
• Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) — defines “sovereign people” and State citizenship
• Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886) — defines sovereignty as residing with the people
• Ex Parte Knowles, 5 Cal. 301 (1855) — no standalone U.S. citizenship prior to the 14th Amendment
• Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) — two distinct classes of citizenship
• Bradwell v. State, 83 U.S. 130 (1873) — 14th Amendment inapplicable to State citizens
• United States v. Anthony (1873) — 14th Amendment created and defined U.S. citizenship as separate from State citizenship
• Van Valkenburg v. Brown, 43 Cal. 43 (1872) — white persons do not owe citizenship to the 14th Amendment
• Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394 (1886) — U.S. citizenship expanded to legal fictions
• Griffin v. U.S. Bank, 2015 WL 1470126 (N.D. Cal. 2015) — courts must address substance, not dismiss based on labels
• United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753 (7th Cir. 2011) — “sovereign citizen” label cannot be basis for summary dismissal
• United States v. Davis, 793 F.3d 712 (7th Cir. 2015) — pejorative labels do not substitute for legal analysis