Illustration by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
As I was driving to get lunch the other day, I saw a luxury SUV with the license plate “JESUSNM” in the lane next to mine, a pretty obvious reference to “Jesus’ name,” a common way that Christians end a prayer.
What isn’t obvious to me is why that plate is allowed but the state has banned drivers from getting “JESUSRX” on their license plate. Or “HOLYGST.” Or “SNOFGOD.” Or “SPIRIT.”
And what about atheists and anti-theists? Drivers who want “NOGOD” or “IH8GOD” are similarly out of luck.
Likewise, the skiing enthusiast who wants “SNOGOD” can’t get it, nor can the hockey player who hopes to adorn a car with “PUCKGOD.”
It isn’t just religious messages that are curiously banned: So are “BGAY,” “GAYFMLY,” “LGBTQ1A” and “QUEER.”
And the plate “IH8EVR1” is on a car that parks most days near the Arizona Mirror’s office, but “OMGIH8U” is verboten.
All of those are among the more than 92,000 personalized license plates that are banned in Arizona. The list largely includes profanities and sexual references — some incredibly clever — but also raises questions about whether the Arizona Department of Transportation is arbitrarily and inconsistently applying state law and regulation to illegally stifle free speech.
But finding that out was far more difficult than it should have been. When I asked ADOT for data on rejected personalized license plates in early January, a spokesman told me the agency actually doesn’t review plates when people request them, so it doesn’t actively reject anything. Instead, the website for the Motor Vehicles Division is programmed to exclude specific words or combinations of letters and numbers that ADOT has determined violate state law or administrative code.
Drivers don’t ever know that the license plate they want is on the banned list. Enter a banned word into the personalized plate creator and the site returns the message that the chosen plate simply “is not available,” the implication being that some other driver already has that wording.
That automatic rejection system went online in 2020, so that’s where agency records of manually disapproved plates ended, the ADOT spokesman told me.
OK, I thought, but what about the list that the MVD website uses to surreptitiously reject vanity plates? ADOT rejected my public records request for that, claiming that it would take too much time and be too expensive to produce the list.
Of course, those aren’t valid reasons for rejecting a request for public records under Arizona law. The Mirror’s attorneys agreed, and set about writing a letter to ADOT explaining just how wrong they were and threatening litigation if they didn’t turn over the list of banned license plates.
Lo and behold, about three weeks later, the records landed in my inbox.
It shouldn’t have taken a couple of thousand dollars in attorney’s fees and the threat of a lawsuit to force ADOT to follow the law and turn over information that affects drivers every day — whether they know it or not — and potentially impinges on the free speech of Arizonans.
This week is what’s known as Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. It occurs in mid-March every year, coinciding with the birthday of James Madison, a driving force behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Madison once wrote that “knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
When ADOT initially refused to provide this information, they weren’t just violating state law — they were undermining the very foundation of democratic governance that Madison envisioned.
If it takes a team of attorneys and the threat of litigation for a media organization to obtain a simple list from a state agency, imagine the barriers facing ordinary citizens without such resources. This isn’t just about quirky license plates — it’s about whether our government truly answers to the people it serves, or whether transparency is merely a convenient fiction.
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