Personalized license plates can be a dicey subject that get drivers into trouble. Often they’re used to say things that state DMVs don’t really think is appropriate, be it speaking out against a political entity they don’t agree with or just simply being vulgar just to be vulgar. Some states have banned personalized license plates from saying vulgar things, while others have ruled that they’re not protected speech, as the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled recently.
In 2010, Tennessee resident Leah Gilliam applied to have a custom license plate at the state’s DMV. She wanted the plate to read “69PWNDU,” a reference to an online gaming term that means “owned you,” used if you best an opponent in a gaming match. The plate was approved, but ten years later in May of 2020, she suddenly received word that her plate had been rejected by the state, who called the term offensive. She was threatened with a fine and jail time if she didn’t surrender the plate. So Gilliam sued, claiming that the rejection of her plate was an infringement on her First Amendment free speech rights.
License plates are government speech, not free speech
Now four years later, Nashville’s Fox 17 and The Tennessean report that the Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled against Gilliam. In a far-reaching decision, the court says that because plates are issued by government agencies, they’re government speech, not free speech, and therefore aren’t protected under the first amendment. From The Tennessean:
“In reaching this decision, the Court relied heavily on the United States Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. in which the Court determined that Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech,” the statement read. “Although personalized alphanumeric combinations differ from specialty plate designs in some respects, the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded that a faithful application of Walker’s reasoning compels the conclusion that alphanumeric codes are government speech too.”
This decision doesn’t just affect Gilliam and her plate — it has serious implications for other drivers in the state. One of Gilliam’s attorneys, David Hudson, was disappointed in the ruling, calling it dangerous. “Anyone who looks at a vanity plate recognizes that it is a personal statement by the owner of the vehicle. It is not the speech of the government. The government speech doctrine has a dangerous capacity to swallow up entire swaths of personal expression. It’s a very dangerous doctrine,” he told The Tennessean.
