Edgy Vanity Plates Test Limits of Free Speech

“The next great First Amendment battleground is just six inches high and is attached to about a million motor vehicles in Virginia alone. It is the vanity license plate, and courts are splintered over whether and how states can censor the messages the plates convey,” the New York Times reports.

“The latest decision landed Friday. It involved Curtis Whateley, who paid Virginia $10 in 2023 for a personalized license plate. He had seven characters to work with, and he sought to convey a statement ‘expressing my opinion on the current state of policing in this country,’ as he would later put it in a lawsuit.”

“He settled on FTP & ATF. No one disputes what those letters stand for. ‘TP’ is the police. ‘ATF’ is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ‘F’ is what you think it is.”