sovereign citizen movement. Sovereign citizens The legal theories of Posse Comitatus have been further developed by the sovereign citizen movement, which claims that a U.S. citizen can become a "sovereign citizen" and thereby be subject only to common law or "constitutional law," not to statutory law (including most taxes). The Uniform Commercial Code plays a part in these legal theories. Some within the movement see African Americans, who only gained legal citizenship after the Civil War and passage of the 14th Amendment, as "14th Amendment citizens" with fewer rights than whites. However, African-American groups have adopted sovereign citizen ideology and developed a version of the movement's beliefs. The sovereign citizen movement in turn gave rise to the "redemption movement," which claims that the U.S. government has enslaved its citizens by using them as collateral against the foreign debt. Redemption scheme promoters sell instructions explaining how citizens can "free" themselves by filing particular government forms in a particular order using particular wording. The movement "has earned its promoters untold profits, buried courts and other agencies under tons of worthless paper, and led to scores of arrests and convictions." The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies some sovereign citizens ("extreme sovereign citizen extremists") as a domestic terrorist movement. In 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that approximately 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers" with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges." Alpine County, California In the late 1970s, the Posse Comitatus attempted to take over Alpine County, California, by settling there and fielding candidates in local elections. Alpine County is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Stockton on the west and east slope of Ebbetts Pass on State Highway 4. The 2010 population is 1,175 people. The posse thought winning local elections in Alpine County was their best opportunity to take control of a single county. The group fielded a candidate for sheriff and registered fictitious voters using post office boxes and vacant lots as their addresses. Six people were prosecuted for voter fraud, the false registration thrown out, and the incumbent sheriff was re-elected. Tigerton, Wisconsin The posse had a presence in Tigerton, Wisconsin, until a crackdown by government prosecutors in the early 1980s left many of the group's leaders imprisoned. See also American militia movement Antisemitism in the United States Christian Patriot movement Constitutional