A foul mouth is okay but foul license plates will not be acceptable. Residents from Maine have been forced to adjust the vulgarities from their license plates. The state is updating its rules to eliminate f-bombs and other obscenities that appeared on vanity license plates after the state effectively eliminated its review process.
The state started issuing recall letters and the process could take up to a few months to complete.
Although Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is passionate about free speech as a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, she spoke out that foul language should not be on license plates as they are state property. Any obscene language is representative of the state.
If you’re still stubborn about dropping the f-bomb, Bellows offers some advice. “What I would say to those who want to engage in objectionable or questionable speech: Get a bumper sticker,” she said.
The streets are getting cleaned up after the review in 2015 following a lawsuit that successfully targeted neighboring New Hampshire’s restrictions on vanity license plates.
Maine’s relaxed approach allowed motorists to register vanity license plates with sexual connotations. One example was a license plate that used a profanity that starts with the letter F, followed by the word “you.”
Last year, the Maine Legislature directed the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to reestablish the criteria for ordering license plates. According to the new rules, references to age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion or disability, will be banned. Any language that is deemed violent, profane or obscene will also be banned.
“In Maine, there are about 124,000 vanity license plates on the roads in a state with about 1.3 million residents. Previous estimates suggested 400 offensive plates could be subject to recall, and nearly 40 recall letters had been issued as of midweek,” officials said.
Save the f-bomb for conversing with fellow drivers in those heated moments of road rage.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/oddities-maine-5e871009b9a41fadc7ec7029ad8d8dad