The 10th Circuit District Court has made it official: international travel is not a fundamental right — especially when it comes to U.S. tax law.

In a first-of-its-kind ruling in the nation, the 1oth Circuit federal appeals court based in Denver upheld U.S. tax law, saying that those who owe significant federal taxes do not have a right to jet away from their responsibilities.

What constitutes “significant” may mean different things to different people; suffice it to say that what is meant by this ruling is several hundred thousand dollars, not the small (but perhaps large to us) few thousand dollars perhaps owed to the Internal Revenue Service on our last year’s taxes.

While the challenge that landed this case in front of the federal court is several years old, the ruling this past week reaffirms the stance that just because a U.S. citizen holds a passport, it doesn’t mean they get to use it if they have responsibilities to our federal government that have not been met.

The court decided that a six-year-old law revoking the passports of people who owe large amounts of back taxes is constitutional.