[Auto] California judge qualifies as illegal rule that prohibits personalized patents with offensive messages

[FNX Magokiler]

In the judgment of the magistrate, the rule can only be applied in terms qualified as "obscene, profane or containing hate speech." However, he said that extending the ordinance to legends who enter the interpretation violates freedom of expression.

A judge in California (USA) decided to declare as illegal the provision adopted by the state authorities regarding the prohibition of decorative license plates that have texts considered offensive, considering that the regulation violates freedom of expression. As reported by the Associated Press, the so-called Golden State decided some time ago to ban the registration of vehicles with legends considered "offensive to good taste and decency." However, this provision was not well received by some inhabitants of the state and five of them decided to go to court after their personalized license plates were rejected for contravening the ordinance.

Among them was a businessman who owns Queer Folks Records who wanted his vehicle's license plate to have the term "QUEER" (a word used to define a sexual tendency), which was rejected because the state, who argued that the term could be considered an insult. According to the news agency report, another case that appealed to justice affected a Slayer fan who was denied the "SLAAYRR" license plate, while another was denied "OGWOOLF" because in the opinion of the Department of Motor Vehicles the term "OG" could be a reference to "Original Gangster".

 

 

After the legal actions were filed, Federal District Judge Jon Tigar ruled that the prohibition adopted by the California authorities was outside the law, since these decorative patents are a type of personal expression and not a "government speech." Because of this, he said that in known cases the ban cannot be applied. However, he added that that does not mean that everything goes. Tigar explained that license plates that are "obscene, profane, or contain hate speech" may be prohibited as they are not covered by the First Amendment. According to the Los Angeles Times, personalized plates are very po[CENSORED]r in the state and proof of this is that during 2018 alone the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) received 249 thousand applications, of which around 30 thousand were rejected due to their questioned legends. The newspaper also noted that despite a ban in place, the rules "were not followed uniformly." In that context, it was noted that the DMV prohibited all references to the number "69" that were not related to the vehicle, as occurs, for example, with the 69 CHEVY. However, it was found that the agency did approve the controversial number on several dozen license plates such as the one that reads "69 LUV N".