> This data was parsed from a set of 458 Excel workbooks that the DMV prepared for someone else's public records request. I received the files as a consolation prize in response to my own related records request, which I was told would cost $2,000 to fulfill otherwise.
That's very interesting. It implies that there seemingly is no central place in CA where this data is stored, otherwise there would be 1 source and 1 format.
Then again, last time I went to the DMV in CA I filled out paperwork online, only for them to print it and then manually process it. And this was 2.5 years ago.
If they don't feel like they can just give anybody any plate they ask for (which indeed they probably shouldn't do), then they shouldn't be issuing custom plates at all. Stuff like this conditions people to think it's appropriate for governments to be arbiters of taste.
In an essentially irrelevant anecdote, I do always wonder how somebody a few blocks from me (not in California) managed to get "HOTWIFE".
Not California, but recently I had "SIXSPD" denied by a state after putting the first known 6-speed manual (all were sold as dual-clutch automatics) in an enthusiast car.
I was told that abbreviations weren't allowed. That was the denial reason.
Resubmitted it, not denied yet. We'll see if it shows up in another 3-5 weeks or if I get a denial letter followed by an another application refund 4-6 weeks after that.
Like the other commenter mentioned, PD can often be interpreted as Police Department but also "speed" interpretations can be marked as drug references. Tough spot, best of luck!
I must commend CA DMV for their wise leverage of UrbanDictionary.com, which is cited over 170 times in that file.
And I must wonder about how reliable they consider UD to be, given that UD is 100% user-generated content. Is it possible to tank a perfectly innocent license plate if someone gins up a misleading UD entry?
Licence plates are a great example where detection "algorithms" be overzealous in returning false positives over false negatives. As someone had above, if they reject SIXSPD and won't allow it, then just try something else. If your life is materially impacted by by a licence plate, it's 'long hard look' time.
(I was going to make a specificity/selectively comment but I don't think that applies here, please correct me otherwise?)
Reminds me of a bot, formerly of Twitter and now on Bluesky, that lists custom Oregon plates as they're registered or expired and made available: https://bsky.app/profile/plat.es
Some of these are ridiculous. QVO ESE was denied because there's a gang that starts with the letter S. "Que hubo ese?" in Spanish is like saying "What's up dude?", it's not even as gang related as "What's up g?".
One of the comments on a gay related ones contained the note "my instructions are to run any gay or lesbian plate by the review board, but as long as its positive it is acceptable". Sounds like more work to deal with those ones, even if it seems alright, which could contribute to the denials.
That row has a "Y" in the last column so it was actually granted after the extra review. Most entries in the csv were rejected, but a few like this one were eventually allowed it looks like.
Talk about power tripping bureaucrats. Just glancing at a few:
> H84BY4Z,7,"I HATE 4X4 VEHICLES. SATIRE, AS I WILL BE PUTTING THIS PLATE ON A 4 WHEEL DRIVE TRUCK",HATE,N
> SAABNUT,1,CRAZZY ABOUT SAAB BRAND CARS,SAAB NUT.. SAAB IS A CAR NUT CAN BE SEXUAL OR CAN MEAN CRAZY,N
> PZA TACO,1,MY TWO FAVORITE THINGS PIZZA AND TACOS,TACO,N
> AIRS$FT,2,AIRSOFT SPORT WE LOVE,AIRSOFT SHOOTING,N
> 3&14 PI,4,THE FIRST 3 DIGITS OF PI,PIE 14 GANG REFERENCE,N
> CHRG4PS,1,CHARGE FOR PEACE,LOOKS LIKE CHARGE FOR PS… NOT SURE WHAT PS MEANS,N
> PINK 64,1,THE CAR IS A 1964 VW BUG,PINK=VAGINA. HAS A 64 VW ON ANI,N
> KIKI$77,1,NAME AND SOFTBALL NUMBER,"kiki=Tagalog, means vagina",N
> MFC,3,"'MFC' IS AN ABBREVIATION FOR 'MOTHERWELL FOOTBALL CLUB' A PREMIERE LEAGUE SOCCER TEAM LOCATED IN MY HOMETOWN OF MOTHERWELL, SCOTLAND.",MFC motherfuck? Motherwell IS a Scottish Football Club,N
> CAT TAX,1,"I WANT A LICENSE PLATE WITH ""CAT"" ON IT, AND I FIGURED A CUSTOM PLATE CAUSES ME TO PAY MORE IN TAXES... SO I AM PAYING THE CAT TAX.",CAT TAX CAT SLANG FOR VAGINA,N
Do any of those rejections seem reasonable to anyone else? They all seem insane to me.
I've seen many rejections for "HATE", any word that could be considered a sexual euphemism (TACO), anything that could be construed as a gang reference, and often anything that the reviewer doesn't understand that is not explained by the submission ("NOT SURE WHAT PS MEANS"). The latter feels paranoid, but it's probably justified.
For those who like doomscrolling, there's a twitter bot for this: https://x.com/ca_dmv_bot2. Seems like 88 is automatically denied because of Hitler, not sure what they do about people born in that year.
>
DAVES88,2,DAVES 1988 TOYOTA,88 HITLER REFRENCE,N
Don't get me wrong, I know some weird parts of the internet use 88 that way.
But c'mon, this is pretty weak, I'd venture 95% of people (if not more) don't even know that reference. Is everyone born in 1988 prevented from using their birth year these days, too?
I think they're likely being very conservative about what they issue, lest someone see the plate, be offended from misunderstanding it, and then get people riled up about how the state is supporting hate or obscenities.
Haha, good one. So in California you can say whatever neonazi shizz you like and buy Hitler's books because of the 1st ammendent but you can't have an 88 on your state issued vanity license plate (what about randomly issued ones?) But in Germany where all that is forbidden by law you have the short form of the hitler salute on a whole city's plates. Looks like no one died from those in German so can we just reinstate the 1st on license plates California and save a few millions in review costs? It's not like things were fast at the DMV anyways..
Possibly a coincidence, but with Musk's politics, it seems, at least as likely, this may be a recent, intentional, example of 88 as Heil Hitler (August 8 = 8/8):
Most of the time it means that they are putting the plate on a 1988 vehicle or that they were born in 1988. But it's being denied because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and thus 88 might be construed as HH, which might be construed as Heil Hitler: https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/88. In some rare cases it might even be intended to have this meaning.
I filed for "YUUUGE" in the Trump era for my mini cooper, saying it was ironic, referencing the cooper's small size and it got denied it for inappropriate sexual reference.
My friend, Big Dave, is at least 6'6" and a body builder in addition to being a computer operator. He applied for GR8BIGD, and was denied; but got it on appeal because he's actually great big d(ave).
I've had my mini since 2023, license plate MINIKIN, which is a real word meaning something small and precious and dainty. Fits it perfectly. There is a twin in TX that a friend saw, albeit of a different color.
Uncomfortable with K1LLJ3W & don’t (deeply) need to see GOATSE in the neighbor’s driveway every morning.
Driving’s a privilege they tell us, makes sense they’d restrict plates based on sensibilities of the average taxpayer.
Meanwhile offensive, say, t-shirts might be seen on the sidewalk but perhaps not in around your usual hangouts as a boring, easily offended person (I kid!)
(Not married to these opinions, LMK of any obvious misses here)
> Uncomfortable with K1LLJ3W & don’t (deeply) need to see GOATSE in the neighbor’s driveway every morning
Counterpoint: I’d give zero shits about their noise complaints or parking preferences going forward, and I suspect my town’s police would be fine with that.
I feel like if you try and file a police report because your car with one of those plates got vandalized, they'd take their sweet time trying to follow up on it... just saying :)
The reasons given for other rejections are so stupid and far-fetched. Fourteen and eighty eight are Hitler related? Even if true, less than 0.1% of all Americans would recognize such a reference.
I usually appreciate objectivity, but in human processes it rarely works. There are always edge cases. Write down all the rules for number plates and someone will find a way to write an offensive one, or language will change and the policy won't have caught up. You need human subjectivity in the loop as a check.
This is where "smart" contracts fell down, the pitch was having truly objective and automated contracts, which were supposed to be better than legal contracts because of those properties. But what we actually got was contracts where finding a loophole meant you could screw over the other party and be contractually guaranteed to get away with it. The real benefit of a legal contract is being able to go to court and litigate it and theoretically come out with a fair result. That's not always possible, but it is much more likely than with "smart" contracts.
> Write down all the rules for number plates and someone will find a way to write an offensive one, or language will change and the policy won't have caught up. You need human subjectivity in the loop as a check.
That's not what I meant with subjectivity. I want objective rules, like "license place should be 6 alphanumeric letters".
as soon as you say "it shouldn't be offensive to the average citizen", you're in the subjectivity realm.
Ok, but you'd agree that we shouldn't allow, say, an offensive word for a specific race to be used right? Because that would be actively harmful to many people.
So we make a rule saying "you can't use word X". So someone submits a plate that is X but... with a number replacing a letter. It's not against the rules, but it's still actively harmful because a human subjectively reads it as the banned word. So you expand the rule, but then language changes, etc etc. Surely you need to have a subjective judgement process because the interpretation/harm is subjective?
I'll grant you that finding the right balance here, or where the line is, is a hard problem. This list to me however shows that it can be achieved in a reasonable way.
Alternatively if you think that people should be allowed to use widely recognised, highly derogatory words for other people as number plates, that rules like being 6 characters is strictly sufficient, then I think we disagree too much to resolve.
I prefer taxes on purchases whose main use is status competition (e.g., a yacht, a dress or a pair of shoes that costs more than $1000) over other kinds of taxes, and I suspect that vanity license plates are mainly purchased for their effects on status (and a full 100% of the purchase price goes to the taxing authority, which is nice).
You can write anything you like on your car. You can't force the state to endorse any identification you'd like for it. Seems like a pretty clear line.
> This data was parsed from a set of 458 Excel workbooks that the DMV prepared for someone else's public records request. I received the files as a consolation prize in response to my own related records request, which I was told would cost $2,000 to fulfill otherwise.
That's very interesting. It implies that there seemingly is no central place in CA where this data is stored, otherwise there would be 1 source and 1 format.
Then again, last time I went to the DMV in CA I filled out paperwork online, only for them to print it and then manually process it. And this was 2.5 years ago.
If they don't feel like they can just give anybody any plate they ask for (which indeed they probably shouldn't do), then they shouldn't be issuing custom plates at all. Stuff like this conditions people to think it's appropriate for governments to be arbiters of taste.
In an essentially irrelevant anecdote, I do always wonder how somebody a few blocks from me (not in California) managed to get "HOTWIFE".
Not California, but recently I had "SIXSPD" denied by a state after putting the first known 6-speed manual (all were sold as dual-clutch automatics) in an enthusiast car.
I was told that abbreviations weren't allowed. That was the denial reason.
Resubmitted it, not denied yet. We'll see if it shows up in another 3-5 weeks or if I get a denial letter followed by an another application refund 4-6 weeks after that.
If abbreviations aren't allowed, couldn't you just do "6SPEED"?
Some states forbid starting with a number
Like the other commenter mentioned, PD can often be interpreted as Police Department but also "speed" interpretations can be marked as drug references. Tough spot, best of luck!
As someone who lives in Seattle it definitely sounds like six something Seattle police department
> OMW2EYL,3,PERSONAL QUOTE,ON MY WAY TO END YOUR LIFE,N
How did they figure that one. If that's what it's supposed to mean, that reviewer is good...
Some of the reasons are nuts, like 'xyz is a slur in Tagalog'.
The person qualified to review with that level of detail must have some really interesting party tricks
I must commend CA DMV for their wise leverage of UrbanDictionary.com, which is cited over 170 times in that file.
And I must wonder about how reliable they consider UD to be, given that UD is 100% user-generated content. Is it possible to tank a perfectly innocent license plate if someone gins up a misleading UD entry?
Signed,
Don Palabros
Licence plates are a great example where detection "algorithms" be overzealous in returning false positives over false negatives. As someone had above, if they reject SIXSPD and won't allow it, then just try something else. If your life is materially impacted by by a licence plate, it's 'long hard look' time.
(I was going to make a specificity/selectively comment but I don't think that applies here, please correct me otherwise?)
Same data in a Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IUVU9Q4uN_lxqNd5AsN...
Note: I normalized the data a bit and I think I translated some of the abbreviations and reasons for rejection. It also got reordered at some point.
SEVAK13,,"SEVAK = SERVANT, 13 = THERA = YOUR, IN PUNJABI THIS MEANS ""GOD, I AM YOUR SERVANT.""","13, GANG REFERENCE",N
Yes, Sevak is servant and the number 13 in Punjabi is "tera" which also means "yours".
Unfortunately in California the number 13 is a GANG REFERENCE. lol. Probably a free-speech argument to be made here?
[flagged]
Reminds me of a bot, formerly of Twitter and now on Bluesky, that lists custom Oregon plates as they're registered or expired and made available: https://bsky.app/profile/plat.es
Shame you can’t get ASSMAN
Proctologists everywhere mourn the lost opportunity
> Proctologists everywhere mourn the lost opportunity
Luckily there are many ways to abbreviate “hemorrhoid” without running afoul of the censors.
(IANAL)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/dave-assman-sgi-...
We also missed out on this gem:
GASSMAN, "I'M AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST"
The one proctologist I had the displeasure of meeting for reasons I don't wish to discuss had an excellent sense of humor.
The Greeks would certainly approve of his humor [1]. Ahem.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism
IANAL denied too for a proctology lawyer.
Some of these rejections are so lame. I can’t see any good reasons that “gaymer” or “air$oft” were rejected.
Most of them are sex jokes or racist so fair enough, but the rejections seem way too sensitive for the others.
This guy was robbed
> TUNA FSH
> I'M A PROFESSIONAL FISHERMAN AND I FISH FOR TUNA ALL OVER THE WORLD
> DMV: I GOOGLED HIM, HE IS AND HE DOES
> DENIED
There must be a blanket policy that they have to follow for some words.
or they’re saving it for a frank zappa fan
Some of these are ridiculous. QVO ESE was denied because there's a gang that starts with the letter S. "Que hubo ese?" in Spanish is like saying "What's up dude?", it's not even as gang related as "What's up g?".
My favorite is
> BJS4DDS,1,MY INITIALS AND MY WIFE INITIALS,BLOW JOBS FOR DENTAL WORK… CUSTOMER IS BRIAN J SAMUELS,N
"GAYMUR" was actually granted, it has a "Y" in the last column. Everything in the csv was just sent for extra review, not all of them were rejected.
One of the comments on a gay related ones contained the note "my instructions are to run any gay or lesbian plate by the review board, but as long as its positive it is acceptable". Sounds like more work to deal with those ones, even if it seems alright, which could contribute to the denials.
Interesting that one of them in the CSV was a Russian phrase: https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/russian-wor...
, where all the letters are representable using ASCII (B is pronounced V in Russian)
I recently got the California TEKWZRD plate :-)
I don't understand why REDROCK was so offensive. There's a coffee shop in Mountain View with that name.
That row has a "Y" in the last column so it was actually granted after the extra review. Most entries in the csv were rejected, but a few like this one were eventually allowed it looks like.
That data is hard to consume. It needs a website grid browser to annotate it.
Notable by omission, as seen in the wild some decades ago, on a VW "Rabbit": FKSLK12
Talk about power tripping bureaucrats. Just glancing at a few:
> H84BY4Z,7,"I HATE 4X4 VEHICLES. SATIRE, AS I WILL BE PUTTING THIS PLATE ON A 4 WHEEL DRIVE TRUCK",HATE,N
> SAABNUT,1,CRAZZY ABOUT SAAB BRAND CARS,SAAB NUT.. SAAB IS A CAR NUT CAN BE SEXUAL OR CAN MEAN CRAZY,N
> PZA TACO,1,MY TWO FAVORITE THINGS PIZZA AND TACOS,TACO,N
> AIRS$FT,2,AIRSOFT SPORT WE LOVE,AIRSOFT SHOOTING,N
> 3&14 PI,4,THE FIRST 3 DIGITS OF PI,PIE 14 GANG REFERENCE,N
> CHRG4PS,1,CHARGE FOR PEACE,LOOKS LIKE CHARGE FOR PS… NOT SURE WHAT PS MEANS,N
> PINK 64,1,THE CAR IS A 1964 VW BUG,PINK=VAGINA. HAS A 64 VW ON ANI,N
> KIKI$77,1,NAME AND SOFTBALL NUMBER,"kiki=Tagalog, means vagina",N
> MFC,3,"'MFC' IS AN ABBREVIATION FOR 'MOTHERWELL FOOTBALL CLUB' A PREMIERE LEAGUE SOCCER TEAM LOCATED IN MY HOMETOWN OF MOTHERWELL, SCOTLAND.",MFC motherfuck? Motherwell IS a Scottish Football Club,N
> CAT TAX,1,"I WANT A LICENSE PLATE WITH ""CAT"" ON IT, AND I FIGURED A CUSTOM PLATE CAUSES ME TO PAY MORE IN TAXES... SO I AM PAYING THE CAT TAX.",CAT TAX CAT SLANG FOR VAGINA,N
Do any of those rejections seem reasonable to anyone else? They all seem insane to me.
Eh, they're consistent at least.
I've seen many rejections for "HATE", any word that could be considered a sexual euphemism (TACO), anything that could be construed as a gang reference, and often anything that the reviewer doesn't understand that is not explained by the submission ("NOT SURE WHAT PS MEANS"). The latter feels paranoid, but it's probably justified.
The submission does explain PS, though! They said it means "peace" as in "charge for peace".
MFC STANDS FOR MICROSOFT FOUNDATION CLASSES, REJECTED, N
For those who like doomscrolling, there's a twitter bot for this: https://x.com/ca_dmv_bot2. Seems like 88 is automatically denied because of Hitler, not sure what they do about people born in that year.
There's one approved in there because the car was made in 1988.
Chinese also like to use the digit 8 as it's a lucky number in their culture.
They are rejecting a lot of numbers..
13 GANG REFERENCE
14 = GANG NUMBER
PULLED FOR 69
Also they rejected PZA TACO (pizza taco) because taco can be slang for pussy. What a job to decide this stuff lol.
> DAVES88,2,DAVES 1988 TOYOTA,88 HITLER REFRENCE,N
Don't get me wrong, I know some weird parts of the internet use 88 that way.
But c'mon, this is pretty weak, I'd venture 95% of people (if not more) don't even know that reference. Is everyone born in 1988 prevented from using their birth year these days, too?
> Is everyone born in 1988 prevented from using their birth year these days, too?
Yes, they are:
> BLK88BZ,2,NICKNAME AND BIRTH YEAR,88-HITLER. BIRTH YEAR VERIFIED AS '88,N
> 28GSV88,2,IMPORTANT DATE.,"88=HATE SYMBOL, NO 88 CAR ON ANI. 28 IS BIRTHDATE AND 1988 IS YEAR",N
> AMK 88,2,INITIALS AND YEAR OF BIRTH,"88=hate symbol, no 88 car. was born in 88",N
> 88DURAN,2,YEAR OF MY BIRTH AND LAST NAME.,88-HITLER. BIRTH YEAR CONFIRMED AS 1988,N
> 6TTT88,2,BIRTHDAY AND INITIALS,88-HITLER. BIRTH YEAR CONFIRMED AS 1988,N
> 88 MAR,7,MY BIRTH YEAR AND MONTH,88-HITLER. BIRTH MONTH AND YEAR CONFIRMED.,N
> 88HENRY,7,YEAR OF BIRTH AND LAST NAME,88-HITLER. BIRTH YEAR CONFIRMED,N
In case it's not clear, in all of the above applications, the DMV confirmed the person was really born in 1988 and denied the plate anyway.
Must be some blanket policy they have to follow.
I think they're likely being very conservative about what they issue, lest someone see the plate, be offended from misunderstanding it, and then get people riled up about how the state is supporting hate or obscenities.
Then I'm immediately curious if they issue randomized plates containing these things, like '88'.
It feels like they would, but maybe I'm wrong. But it would be hilarious if they did.
…dare I ask what the 88 means?
Others:
American auto in production whole last half of 20th Century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_88
Wehrmacht 88mm tank artillery round:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_the_German_Army
H is the 8th letter of the alphabet.. the initials of a former greeting.
It is also coincidentally the prefix for all license plates in the city of/region around Hamburg, as HH stands for Hansestadt Hamburg.
Haha, good one. So in California you can say whatever neonazi shizz you like and buy Hitler's books because of the 1st ammendent but you can't have an 88 on your state issued vanity license plate (what about randomly issued ones?) But in Germany where all that is forbidden by law you have the short form of the hitler salute on a whole city's plates. Looks like no one died from those in German so can we just reinstate the 1st on license plates California and save a few millions in review costs? It's not like things were fast at the DMV anyways..
88 = "Heil Hitler"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_neo-Nazism
Possibly a coincidence, but with Musk's politics, it seems, at least as likely, this may be a recent, intentional, example of 88 as Heil Hitler (August 8 = 8/8):
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robo...
Most of the time it means that they are putting the plate on a 1988 vehicle or that they were born in 1988. But it's being denied because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and thus 88 might be construed as HH, which might be construed as Heil Hitler: https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/88. In some rare cases it might even be intended to have this meaning.
> In some rare cases it might even be intended to have this meaning.
From experience moderating large Internet communities, I'd say that is much less rare than I wish it was.
I filed for "YUUUGE" in the Trump era for my mini cooper, saying it was ironic, referencing the cooper's small size and it got denied it for inappropriate sexual reference.
My friend, Big Dave, is at least 6'6" and a body builder in addition to being a computer operator. He applied for GR8BIGD, and was denied; but got it on appeal because he's actually great big d(ave).
I've had my mini since 2023, license plate MINIKIN, which is a real word meaning something small and precious and dainty. Fits it perfectly. There is a twin in TX that a friend saw, albeit of a different color.
The latest version of this request form in DMV CA doesn't even ask for meaning of the plate/phrase now.
I would be happy to talk to the person that does/did this stupid job.
[dead]
where do we draw the line? I think people should be able to choose any license plate they want, just like they can choose any name they wish.
in general, I'm all for removing subjectivity.
Uncomfortable with K1LLJ3W & don’t (deeply) need to see GOATSE in the neighbor’s driveway every morning.
Driving’s a privilege they tell us, makes sense they’d restrict plates based on sensibilities of the average taxpayer.
Meanwhile offensive, say, t-shirts might be seen on the sidewalk but perhaps not in around your usual hangouts as a boring, easily offended person (I kid!)
(Not married to these opinions, LMK of any obvious misses here)
> Uncomfortable with K1LLJ3W & don’t (deeply) need to see GOATSE in the neighbor’s driveway every morning
Counterpoint: I’d give zero shits about their noise complaints or parking preferences going forward, and I suspect my town’s police would be fine with that.
Your Jewish neighbors might not feel quite as nonchalant
I feel like if you try and file a police report because your car with one of those plates got vandalized, they'd take their sweet time trying to follow up on it... just saying :)
The reasons given for other rejections are so stupid and far-fetched. Fourteen and eighty eight are Hitler related? Even if true, less than 0.1% of all Americans would recognize such a reference.
Others are rejected for AREA CODE reason? WTF?
This is extreme government overreach.
14 and 88 are widely used as neonazi dog whistles.
> in general, I'm all for removing subjectivity
I usually appreciate objectivity, but in human processes it rarely works. There are always edge cases. Write down all the rules for number plates and someone will find a way to write an offensive one, or language will change and the policy won't have caught up. You need human subjectivity in the loop as a check.
This is where "smart" contracts fell down, the pitch was having truly objective and automated contracts, which were supposed to be better than legal contracts because of those properties. But what we actually got was contracts where finding a loophole meant you could screw over the other party and be contractually guaranteed to get away with it. The real benefit of a legal contract is being able to go to court and litigate it and theoretically come out with a fair result. That's not always possible, but it is much more likely than with "smart" contracts.
> Write down all the rules for number plates and someone will find a way to write an offensive one, or language will change and the policy won't have caught up. You need human subjectivity in the loop as a check.
That's not what I meant with subjectivity. I want objective rules, like "license place should be 6 alphanumeric letters".
as soon as you say "it shouldn't be offensive to the average citizen", you're in the subjectivity realm.
Ok, but you'd agree that we shouldn't allow, say, an offensive word for a specific race to be used right? Because that would be actively harmful to many people.
So we make a rule saying "you can't use word X". So someone submits a plate that is X but... with a number replacing a letter. It's not against the rules, but it's still actively harmful because a human subjectively reads it as the banned word. So you expand the rule, but then language changes, etc etc. Surely you need to have a subjective judgement process because the interpretation/harm is subjective?
I'll grant you that finding the right balance here, or where the line is, is a hard problem. This list to me however shows that it can be achieved in a reasonable way.
Alternatively if you think that people should be allowed to use widely recognised, highly derogatory words for other people as number plates, that rules like being 6 characters is strictly sufficient, then I think we disagree too much to resolve.
if you're for removing subjectivity, then you should be calling for them to remove the option for a vanity plate entirely
I prefer taxes on purchases whose main use is status competition (e.g., a yacht, a dress or a pair of shoes that costs more than $1000) over other kinds of taxes, and I suspect that vanity license plates are mainly purchased for their effects on status (and a full 100% of the purchase price goes to the taxing authority, which is nice).
Yeah but you have to have someone review them which costs some money.
You can write anything you like on your car. You can't force the state to endorse any identification you'd like for it. Seems like a pretty clear line.
I also don’t know exactly where to draw the line, but I can think of dozens of plates I wouldn’t want my kids reading out in the world
I see far more obscene bumper stickers, which AFAIK are protected by 1A, so you can exercise your right there.
Then again, this is California...
You can't choose any name you wish in any country.
For example in US, Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ are banned names.
No, they aren't.