Tag Party

Most every state has had a person at their Department of Motor Vehicles Department whose job it is to guard the public from seeing obscene or suggestive vanity license tags.

And most every state has a couple of hundred people dedicated to applying for tags like KIZMYAZZ or PB4UGO, to confound the authorities.

A guy here in Maryland fought in the courts for years (and spent who knows how much on lawyers) to keep his MIERDA tag. If you don't know that word, ask a Spanish teacher. PS, he lost in the end.

Maryland's MVA allowed the WTF tag to remain on someone's Studebaker, because the owner claimed it celebrated their WaTerFront property. 

Sure.

Someone stupid at the MVA tried to disallow ALLAH, but that was reversed and chalked up to an "overcautious employee." Yes. Can't be too cautious about mentioning God.

Maryland actually has a list for their MVA employees to see what is banned, although the newspaper can't print it. WTF?

Well sir, up in Maine, there has never been any sort of regulation about what your tag can say, but watch out now; a new law just went into effect. What the state will do all about all those UPURS and 4Q2 tags is not quite certain. Chances are, they won't be renewed when the time comes.

As of now, there are all sort of tags up there - even one with the most common, two word seven letter profanity. I would like to talk to the man who has that tag!

Heavy traffic in Wiscasset, Maine.

So the Maine lawyers will work to, at once, make sure your First Amendment rights are safe, while getting rid of obscenity on your Pontiac.

“Rule-making will delay the process of active removal of plates from the road but will help us balance the free speech rights of citizens and the public interest of removing inappropriate license plates,” said a state spokeperson.

Shenna Bellows is the Secretary of State in Maine, and she says the state became "the Wild Wild West of vanity license plates" when they dropped their review process in 2015.  “Our anything-goes approach was unusual," Bellows said.

Bellows used to be executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, so she is all about free speech, but she acknowledges she didn't understand the extent of “really disturbing” license plates before she became secretary of state earlier this year.

Bellows says her stance mirrors that of the FCC:  “If you can’t say it on the 6 o'clock news, it shouldn't be on a license plate."

And she points out, “The license plate is the property of the state,” she said. “If you really want an offensive slogan on your car, then you can use a bumper sticker.”

My all time favorite, seen in Towson, was #LB SAND. I hope it's still out there somewhere!