Are vanity license plates protected speech? One woman is appealing hers to Supreme Court.
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Source: USA Today
Aug. 31,. 2025, 3:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON – Texas wouldn’t let a critic of President Donald Trump have a custom license plate reading “JAIL 45.” College football fans in Michigan can’t request a vanity plate that says “OSUSUCKS.” Arizona allowed the religious message “JESUSNM.” But Vermont blocked “JN36TN”, a reference to the Bible verse John 3:16.
States’ rules for what is and isn’t allowed on personalized plates are often unclear and can amount to a “dizzying array of censorship,” lawyers for a Tennessee woman have told the Supreme Court in a bid for the justices to get involved. Leah Gilliam wants the court to find that she is expressing her own views through a vanity plate, not the government’s, a decision that would limit states’ ability to control that message.
The justices came to the opposite conclusion in 2015 when upholding restrictions on the design of specialty license plates, which support a cause or organization. States that sell specialty plates can prohibit images such as the Confederate flag, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision. "States have long used license plates in this country to convey government messages," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority.
But Gilliam’s attorneys argue judges have disagreed about whether the same is true for the combination of letters and numbers on personalized license plates.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/31/supreme-court-vanity-license-plates-appeal/85834301007/
= new reply since forum marked as read
OH MY FSM
TARDIS
Personally, I don't want to see FUCK X plates out there, but I'd let JAIL45 go through. If someone wants to reference God on theirs, I don't see a problem with that as long as SATAN is also accepted.
on edit: I forgot about the decorative plates the states put out. Not sure what I think about that since I would never go with anything other than the famous CO mountains plate. We were driving in CA with CO plates & got honked at so many times. A couple time people yelled out, "Hey Colorado!" & would wave. This was back in the 80s.
I have a tee shirt with one just like that, & a woman at an event told me, "That is the cutest little butterfly!" 
and often found myself out there with cars who all went in to work around the same time every day. There was one that had a plate that I believe said -
IMOK
For years, I debated about getting a vanity plate but tried to weigh the risks to the benefits and figured it was too risky - especially when there was a time when we were required to have registration stickers on the plate and that eventually resulted in people snipping the corners of license plates to get the stickers. So I figured the plate itself could be a goner too if "popular" and/or would be too identifiable. 
