For the value of $77 to $224, Pennsylvania residents can get a customized license plate that “contain[s] a combination of up to seven letters and/or numbers,” per the state’s Division of Transportation (PennDOT).
That’s except your software for a conceit plate is among the many 2,872 rejected over time.
The division retains a “Do Not Issue” checklist, successfully banning hundreds of “unacceptable configurations” that they interpret as euphemisms, epithets, or obstructions to legislation enforcement.
These restrictions are backed by PennDot’s loosely outlined checklist of 16 standards, which the division’s employees strictly adheres to, utilizing web slang dictionaries to test if the acronyms go.
To be truthful, it is not the complete checklist that raises eyebrows. Restrictions on libel or slander—in addition to textual content that meddles with the license plates’ major objective “to provide a State-issued, visible, and unique alpha-numeric identification mark for display in a uniform manner”—make sense.
However then you will have “words which inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” What does that embrace, precisely? It contains what the division employees says it contains.
Additionally not allowed are acronyms that counsel sexual innuendo, like BLOWME, or comprise profane or obscene intent, like DZZNUTZ. Do not even take into consideration references to excretory features.
Pennsylvania is much from the one state that has banned acronyms from vainness plates. New York would not enable NOTPOLCE or, for no matter cause, AY000000. Tennessee banned ILVTOFU again in 2014 for a vegan software. In 2017, Georgia banned Donald Trump’s notorious COVFEFE gaffe. Kentucky mentioned no to KARMA.
The examples do not finish there; a listing of banned personalised plates is commonplace throughout the U.S. However the constitutionality of the matter will not be essentially settled.
In 2015, a Texas nonprofit argued that displaying the Accomplice flag on the group’s particular license plate was their First Modification proper. In a 5-4 vote, the court docket disagreed.
“In our view, specialty license plates issued pursuant to Texas’s statutory scheme convey government speech,” former Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. “Were the Free Speech Clause interpreted otherwise, government would not work.”
The dissent argued that most individuals don’t acknowledge speech on a license plate as authorities coverage. “The Court’s decision passes off private speech as government speech,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito, “and, in doing so, establishes a precedent that threatens private speech that government finds displeasing.”
The Courtroom’s ruling, nevertheless, utilized to particular plates with names and logos, not personalised plates. There may be thus no official ruling at a nationwide degree as as to whether vainness plates are non-public or authorities speech. This leaves loads of room for state officers to interpret the propriety of functions for approval, and even to rescind vainness plates to handle complaints.
With out an official distinction, nevertheless, there have been many cases of profitable lawsuits to reverse rejections, from hanging down Kentucky’s rejection of IM GOD to stopping California’s crackdown in opposition to messages “offensive to good taste and decency.”
Eugene Volokh, a professor of legislation on the College of California Los Angeles Faculty of Regulation, wrote that decrease courts, upon petition, have sometimes acknowledged the design of the plate as authorities speech, however not the textual content itself. However till there’s an official distinction by the Supreme Courtroom, rejected candidates who’re upset can attempt suing. In any other case, the next-best choice is taking it as much as the division.
And although PennDOT is keen to debate rejections with candidates, they’ve a disclaimer: “PennDOT reserves the right to limit or reject certain requests.”