Sovereign Citizens And QAnon Team Up To Birth New Stupid Legal Tactic

// Let me say, in a very “Law & Order” voice, that in the American legal system, there are a lot of pro se litigants forced into pursuing their own legal claims due to the surging cost of attorney representation, creating a new and rapidly growing frontier in the access to justice gap. These are NOT their stories.

Instead, these are the stories of the sovereign citizen dingbats who spent years complaining that all courts are maritime courts and yelling gibberish at judges. Despite the paucity of cognizable legal reasoning behind their ramblings, the internet community around these people keeps pumping out more and more wild delusions about how the fringe on the American flag is the true source of the court’s jurisdiction and how pointing that out moots all other statutes.

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We make fun of these people around here because they’re destructive blots on the rule of law, but also because they’re incredibly stupid. As lawyers, we should all be aware of what they’re thinking at all times because they are going to become a problem for practitioners eventually — either by vexatiously challenging your own work or by convincing your clients to do incredibly stupid stuff based on some 1800s admiralty case they’ve decided invalidates their property taxes.

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Unfortunately, a number of these folks have now fully embraced the right-wing QAnon movement that believes politicians run pedophile rings in pizza joints and the only one trying to stop them is, ironically, Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy. The result of this combo is a new legal strategy aimed at intimidating local school boards based on entirely made up “legal-ish” ramblings.

It’s called “Bonds for the Win” and it’s based on the idea that all government officials must have a private bond in order to hold office — they don’t — and that parents can then file claims against the bonds of local school boards — they can’t — if the boards don’t cease and desist “unconstitutional” policies — which they aren’t pursuing.

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Ostensibly this is meant to tie up school boards in litigation, though it’s unclear how it would even get to that point. While undeniably harassment, the scheme will crumble the moment anyone tries to file a claim with a nonexistent surety company. Perhaps, at that point, the Qnutters will file lawsuits alleging that the school boards are in breach of their fictitious obligation to carry bonds, but that would require these people to acknowledge that a court has jurisdiction over them in the first place.

You can see the quandary this puts them in!

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So, for now, the most important message to get out there is that — unless your local school board has some unique rule about bonds — when you see crazy people show up at your meetings with paperwork, those are probably just crazy people with paperwork. Trust your board legal counsel and don’t hyperventilate over the parade of idiots.

And, for the school board counsel out there, it’s not time to get squeamish about seeking sanctions. Attorneys are leery of pursuing sanctions in the best of cases and get even less enthusiastic at the prospect of going after a pro se litigant who courts see as unqualified to even realize the ethical breach at hand, but these people are banking on that reticence. These strategies are about weaponizing American-style litigation by driving up costs that your clients have to bear while skipping away from any consequences for abusing the system.

They don’t know the law, but they understand that much. Counsel have a client-service obligation to go on the offensive in asking for fees and sanctions in the face of a coordinated strategy of vexatious legal threats.

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Though, for many school boards, the problem isn’t make-believe lawyers ranting about bonds, it’s state governments actively trying to criminalize education. Because when the sovereign citizens get inside the house — especially the state house — that’s when the real trouble begins.

And it’s begun in a lot of places.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

Education / Schools, Government, Legal Ethics, Sovereign Citizens