WSJ -- Maine Is Cracking Down on Obscene License Plates .................................................
June 15, 2022
What the BLEEP?
Maine Is Cracking Down on Obscene License Plates.
End of vanity-plate free-for-all likely to cause recall of hundreds of vulgar tags, but not in time for summer vacations
 
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Scott Calvert
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has some advice for the families pouring into her state this summer for a quintessential New England family vacation: “Parental advisory required. Don’t play the license-plate game in Maine.”
Hundreds of cars in the state that calls itself “Vacationland” have government-issued vanity plates that some state officials consider obscene or grossly offensive. About two dozen spell out the F-word, and others easily get the point across without all four letters, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the roughly 115,000 vanity plates found. More than a few are blatantly sexual.
The free-for-all is supposed to end later this year when the state’s new Vanity Plate Review Committee revs up. Its three members -- two Bureau of Motor Vehicles staffers and the vehicle services director -- will carry out a 2021 state law meant to rein in the rudeness that has made Maine a Wild West of vanity plates.
The law bans derogatory references to, among other things, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion. Also out: plates that connote genitalia, relate to sexual acts or meet the state’s definition of profane or obscene. Plates already on the road that are found to be in violation will be recalled.
For help with arcane lingo, the committee will consult the Urban Dictionary, an online slang compendium. Members might also want to keep handy foreign-language dictionaries and a mirror, as the law covers “mirror images of a word or term otherwise prohibited … even if expressed in a language other than English.” (One Maine motorcycle currently has a plate that, when seen in a rearview mirror, describes a sexual act.)
For now, says Ms. Bellows, “We have lobster, blueberry pie -- and still a few obscene license plates on the road.”
Like nearly all other states, Maine allows residents to get personalized plates -- provided the desired letters and numbers aren’t already taken. It costs an extra $25 a year.
Shania Roussel knows she might soon have to give up the plate she got in 2020. It features the F-word plus “AHH” -- think “-ER” in a Maine accent. Ms. Roussel, 25 years old, said the seven letters on her Toyota Corolla aren’t a slur but a spicy homage to the Pine Tree State.
Shania Roussel’s plate has made for some awkward moments.
PHOTO: IVY JOHNS
“It was like, how can I incorporate my frequent swearing with my love for my state?” she recalls thinking when she selected her plate.
Most people, including out-of-state visitors, seem amused, she says, except for the guy who berated her outside a Dunkin’. But the plate can make for awkward moments, like the time her then-boss asked her to drive her Toyota Corolla to visit a client, rather than take a company car.
“I explained it to him, and he immediately was like, ‘Oh, yeah, no, absolutely not,’ ” she recalls.
For George Fogg, 89, the state can’t slam on the brakes fast enough on vulgar vanities. He was one of more than a dozen Mainers who cheered the new law in e-mails sent to the secretary of state’s office. “If it can’t be said in front of your mother, I think it’s wrong,” he says.
Residents honked off by new restrictions also sent emails. “I don’t buy vanity plates and actually think they are stupid and -- well vain. But I DO NOT AGREE with trampling the 1st amendment because a few people are hurt by it,” wrote John Hawkins.
Until 2015, Maine was part of the clean-plate club to which most states belong. The secretary of state could reject “obscene, contemptuous, profane or prejudicial” vanity plates, or those promoting “abusive or unlawful activity.” The law was changed, in part because of worries it would be found unconstitutional, as happened in some other states.
Matt Dunlap, secretary of state from 2013 to 2021, defended the looser approach, which limited the state to blocking plates that encouraged violence. “A lot of people might find this rather sulfuric in its odor, but that’s the back end of the Constitution,” he told the Journal in 2019.
Over the past five years, dozens of people have complained to the secretary of state about what they saw on the road, including plates combining versions of the F-word with President Biden’s name. Among those emails: “Have we no dignity.” “BEYOND vulgar.” “SERIOUSLY?!?!” “I couldn’t believe it!” “I TAKE OFFENSE OF THESE PLATES!!!!!”
One woman wrote that she didn’t think the First Amendment was designed “to teach little kids expletives on their way home from school.” One man griped about a pickup whose plate bore the F-word followed by YOU. “How,” he asked, “did this obvious moron get this vanity plate?”
Max Nosbisch, manager of visitor experiences at the First Amendment Museum in Augusta, the state capital, says the debate raises interesting legal and philosophical questions. Many of the allegedly vulgar plates, he says, aren’t blatantly so, and require some thought to grasp. “You have to really be paying attention to figure out this is obscene,” he says.
When Mandi Garnett went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles website looking to get a vanity plate, she says, she tried several that were taken, including MANDI. Frustrated, she typed in UWHORE, a favorite saying she says she took from the 2004 movie “Mean Girls.” The BMV website said it was available.
Mandi Garnett says her tag was inspired by ‘Mean Girls.’
PHOTO: CLIFF GARNETT
“I kind of sat there and was like, do I really want this on my license plate?” says Ms. Garnett, a married, 31-year-old mother of two. She decided she did. It is now on her SUV. “I have only gotten one negative reaction,” she says. “It was my mother-in-law.”
Ms. Garnett sees Maine’s crackdown as overreach. “What harm do the license plates do to anybody else?” she says. “It’s not going to burn out their eyes if they see it.”
Also opposed is the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, which Ms. Bellows once led. Anahita Sotoohi, a legal fellow there, testified at a May hearing that the law amounted to unconstitutional censorship.
Ms. Bellows, who took office in January 2021, says she is confident the law can withstand a court fight. By next summer, she predicts, the license-plate game will again be safe to play.
“If you really want to be obscene or profane,” she says, “get a bumper sticker.”
Write to Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com
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