Sharon Walby, a "sovereign citizen" of Michigan, but not a 14th Amendment citizen of the United States because she is not an ex-slave, won a major victory in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit!
No, she did not succeed in her suit to recover all federal income taxes she paid. But she did avoid an $8,000 sanction the Government sought for her filing a frivolous appeal, because the Court found that her appeal was the result of her "ignorance of the law."
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wrote:
In this affidavit, Walby declared that she was a sovereign citizen of the state of Michigan and, “because she was not restricted by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, she was not a United States citizen thereunder but rather a nonresident alien not subject to income taxes.
Two questions:
1) Is this the first recorded case of anyone actually claiming to be a sovereign citizen? Usually they deny that status exists and claim the phrase is an oxymoron.
2) Why do people believe only citizens are taxable? Wouldn't they be outraged if the opposite was the case? if Americans paid tax but immigrant workers (Canadian actors, European soccer stars, doctors from India, ...) were exempt? (We know she actually genuinely truthfully believes that, the judge says so).
I would think the answer to #1 would be no, but will leave it to the tax professionals to answer. #2, there you go letting logic get in the way of their fantasy.
Quite the victory though.
The fact that you sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights, does not absolve you of adherence to it.
Admittedly though the sad truth is getting a ruling of "far too stupid to punish" is the closest a sovcits come to actually winning a case that I know of. My worry is that on whatever nutty FB group she first started down this path they'll take this as proof they're on the right track "AHA! Since ignorance of the law is no excuse they clearly weren't showing mercy because the judge believes she was sadly confused but because he COULDNT do anything! Clearly the starting point to forcing the government to give us free money and pay all our bills!".
Build a man a fire you warm him for the night, light a man on fire and you warm him the rest of his life.
The 14th Amendment was indeed intended to ensure that former slaves were American citizens under law, thus overturning the infamous dictum in the Dred Scott case; but these idjits latch onto that factoid and decide that it was the ONLY reason for the Amendment.
In fact, the Amendment was designed to, for ther first time, define American citizenship. Before that, one could not be an American citizen without being a citizen of a state; and since different states had different rules, this amendment meant that there was now a uniform standard by which someone could become an American citizen.
Now, it doesn't matter who your ancestors were. The 14th Amendment wiped that all out. If you meet the tests of the Amendment, you are an American citizen; and none of those tests involve the submission of a certified genealogy record. Easy-peasy.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." -- Pastor Ray Mummert, Dover, PA, during an attempt to introduce creationism -- er, "intelligent design", into the Dover Public Schools
It also fixed it permanently so that another Supreme Court or legislature could come back later and say that another ethic group couldn't even be citizens, like Germans, or Italians, or Poles, or Russians, or Jews, or Catholics, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Mexicans, or different, you fill in the blanks, since there were serious prejudices against all those groups at one time or another in various places. It still rankles some people to this day.
The fact that you sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights, does not absolve you of adherence to it.
