Now A Sovereign Citizen Is Claiming He Doesn't Need A Pilot's License Or Registered Aircraft To Fly

Sovereign Citizens are a zany bunch who think the Constitution allows them to live free of laws, including driving without a driver’s licenses or registration. You don’t want to share the roads with such drivers, but a pilot in Alaska is making these same arguments this week about his lack of pilot’s license or aircraft registration.

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One place you do not want folks thumbing their noses at the rules is on a freaking airplane runway, yet William Marsan lost his pilot’s license trying to do things his own way at during an incident last year at Palmer Municipal Airport in Palmer, Alaska, Alaska Public Media reports:

The case began in June of 2023, when the close call involving Marsan’s Piper Cherokee was reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Marsan did not radio his intention to take off from an airport in Palmer and operated the aircraft against the flow of landing traffic, resulting in a near mid-air collision with another aircraft attempting to land,” officials said in the statement.

According to an indictment filed by prosecutors Thursday, Marsan received a second-class medical certificate from the FAA in 2019 but didn’t renew it the following year. He also canceled the Cherokee’s aircraft registration in 2022.

Marsan was supposed to be grounded, so imagine the Palmer Airport FAA’s safety inspector’s surprise when he found Marsan landing on the tarmac a month after the near miss. When asked to produce his pilot and medical certificate as well as the plane’s airworthiness certificate and registration, Marsan refused, calling himself a “free citizen.” I don’t know about you, but things like airworthiness is pretty important in a plane and maybe should be certified by an outside source maybe? Just spitballing here.

APM reports that Marsan doesn’t identify as a Sovereign Citizen, those people are nuts! No, he identifies as an American State National, which believes a whole bunch of other mumbo jumbo, from Police1:

Leaders of the ASN teach that acquiring a United States passport is one of the steps to becoming an ASN. They instruct followers to apply for “non-national citizen” passports, which they believe officially recognize their status as ASNs by the U.S. Department of State. [4] They also believe that the passport holder has been placed on a special “Do not detain, do not interrogate list,” and as a special bonus, the passport holder now has a concealed weapon permit valid in all 50 states [4] that cannot be revoked. However, there is no evidence to support these claims.

Followers also believe that possessing this special U.S. passport grants them diplomatic immunity, an entirely baseless notion. None of the teachings related to this special passport are valid or real, yet ASNs believe in them and act accordingly. There is a growing trend of ASNs presenting these passports to law enforcement when asked for identification during traffic stops. Encountering someone offering their passport in such a situation is an indicator you may be dealing with an ASN.

ASNs view police officers as “policy enforcement agents” tasked with arresting “code breakers.” This perspective aligns with the belief, common among sovereign citizen ideology, that law enforcement officials serve the “corporation” of the United States. ASNs believe that by filing certain paperwork, they have exempted themselves from the need to adhere to any U.S. codes or laws and act in accordance with these beliefs. Consequently, ASNs do not respect law enforcement and deny they have authority or jurisdiction over them.

Where have we heard that before? Ah yes, in sovereign citizen traffic stops! See, most folks interact with the police via traffic stops, which is why the sovereign citizen movement is so focused on vehicle registration and civil rights in a car. They believe it’s their opportunity to stick it to the man. It never works, but they still try, god bless ’em. Marsan even obscured his plane’s painted identification number in an effort to throw off the feds, much like SCs do with fake license plates. Same thing, different tactics/wording, from APM again:

In a Monday pretrial memo the prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bradley, said that Marsan has indicated he plans to represent himself without legal counsel.

Bradley also said that Marsan had made “discredited, frivolous arguments that have been rejected by the courts for decades,” including that he “is not subject to federal law or jurisdiction because he is not a ‘Citizen of the United States’ but rather an ‘American State National.’”

Anyone who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client. Marsan faces three years in jail, the forfeiture of his plane and a $250,000 fine on each federal charge he faces. I wouldn’t want to fool around with magical legal arguments if I was facing three in a pen.

I have a special place in my heart for SCs because their world view is just so wildly outside of reality. Their legal tactics, like attempting to charge cops for taking up their time with traffic stops, not only fail, but can end up getting them into even more trouble than just a simple traffic stop, like this SC, who turned traffic tickets into a 12-year prison sentence.