Ohio BMV Rejected Approximately 400 Vanity Plates in Past 12 Months
Catchy phrases, nicknames, sports allegiances, and jokes are often the focus of personalized or special license plates. But not every arrangement of numbers, letters or a combination of both will make it from a driver’s request to an actual plate, especially if the phrasing or slogans are crude, disrespectful, or offensive.
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“The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles determined that 408 requests for personalized plates didn’t meet the standards that prohibit offensive messages,” according to Dayton Daily News reporter Laura A. Bischoff.
Some of the titles that didn’t get approval, according to Bischoff, referenced body parts, bathroom humor, sexual-explicit references, violent threats, and hate speech.
The Ohio BMV has an established set of standards applied to personalized or special license plate applications, and license plates verbiage can be denied if it contains profanity, offensive words that can incite violence, or advocate criminal acts.
“These prohibitions apply to any language, read either frontward or backward,” reports Bischoff.
The number of personalized plates requested each day numbers in the hundreds, and most of them don’t get rejected for violating the standards of the Ohio BMV.
According to The Toledo Blade writer Jay Skebba, “Chief of vehicle information services Devon Riggins said 200-300 personalized plates are requested every day in Ohio. The vast majority are harmless and get approved, but a handful are red-flagged.”
Riggins’ department handles the report of personalized license plates requests that are questionable, and a six or seven-member committee reviews them, Skebba adds.
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