Lawyers for a Tennessee woman challenging the denial of a 69PWNDU plate argue that the state’s rules have led to “a dizzying array of censorship.”
Rejected Florida License Plate
The state of Florida has released a list of custom license plates it will reject in 2024, and some of them are pretty racy.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has rejected a Tennessee woman’s appeal challenging her denial of a controversial 69PWNDU personal license plate and will not weigh in on how states regulate vanity license plates.
On December 8, the court refused to hear Leah Gilliam’s appeal. Gilliam argued that each state’s rules about what is and isn’t allowed on personalized plates are often unclear and could amount to “blinding censorship.”
She wants the court to recognize that she is expressing her own views through the veneer, not the government’s, and the decision would limit the state’s ability to control that message.
Justices reached the opposite conclusion in 2015, upholding restrictions on specialty license plate designs that support causes or organizations. States that sell specialty plates can ban images such as the Confederate flag, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision.
“For a long time in this country, states have used license plates to convey government messages,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority.
But Gilliam’s lawyers argued that the justices were divided on whether the same applies to the combination of letters and numbers on personal license plates.
“Given that car owners’ First Amendment speech rights change as they move from state to state, urgent intervention is needed,” they told the Supreme Court. “The same personalized plates that appear on cars in Maryland, Oregon, Delaware, Rhode Island, Kentucky, California, and Michigan could also be banned in Tennessee, Indiana, and Hawaii.”
Tennessee argued that there was no reason for the Supreme Court to revisit the issue.
“This court does not need another license plate case regarding government speech,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scumetti wrote in response to Gilliam’s appeal. “One is enough.”
Decorative plate mentioning “sexual domination” is revoked
In Gilliam’s case, the state of Tennessee initially approved his application for a personalized license plate that read “69PWNDU.” She said the letter was an online gamer phrase, “pwnd u,” meaning to beat your opponent. She initially said the numbers reflected part of her phone number and were not sexual in nature. Gilliam later said that he was an astronomy buff and that “69” referred to the year of the moon landing.
But the state received a complaint 11 years after authorizing the plate and later told her the plate should be revoked because it references sexual domination. Gilliam filed a lawsuit accusing the state of Tennessee of violating his free speech rights. She said she doesn’t object to a state’s right to refuse plates that are profane, sexual or vulgar, as long as there are parameters for what states can ban.
Tennessee Supreme Court says vanity plate is government speech
The Tennessee Supreme Court said the state’s rules are consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Walker v. District of Texas, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
“Although personalized alphanumeric combinations differ in some respects from specialty plate designs, a faithful application of Walker’s reasoning forces the conclusion that they are also government speech,” the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled.
The court said most of Gilliam’s arguments were actually attacks on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2015 case.
“These claims would be better directed to the United States Supreme Court, the only court with the power to overturn or invalidate precedent,” the court said.
Tennessee AG said plates are not a major national problem
Tennessee’s attorney general argued that the issue is much more complex than Mr. Gilliam acknowledged because license plates at least contain government speech.
“Certainly, the part of the license plate (government ID) that identifies a vehicle, the registration number, constitutes government speech,” Sklemetti asked the high court not to get involved.
The bottom line, he said, is that states’ cosmetic license plate regulations are not a pressing issue of national importance to warrant a judge’s time.
Free speech groups support lawsuit
But several free speech groups, including the Individual Rights and Expression Foundation and the First Amendment Bar Association, had argued that the case had larger implications.
In a short letter supporting Gilliam’s suit, the groups said the protections government speech enjoys “is a red herring for government officials, who have a strong incentive to push the boundaries because it frees them from all First Amendment burdens.”
Regarding the Tennessee Supreme Court’s dismissal of Gilliam’s lawsuit, the group said, “If upheld, this ruling would create a constitutional injury that extends beyond the bumper of a vehicle registered in Tennessee.”
