UPDATE: Sununu Steps In, ‘PB4WEGO’ Can Stay!
Wendy Auger has had her vanity license plate for 15 years, according to Fosters. But, she just received a letter from the State telling her to turn it in. Excretory acts aren’t permitted on license plates, the letter says.
Her license plate reads “PB4WEGO.” Something every parent has said and every child has heard. How offensive!
New Hampshire has a long history of trying to infringe on first amendment rights of motorists, it appears.
COPSLIE
In 2014, New Hampshire’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that New Hampshire violated the free speech of a man that wanted ‘COPSLIE’ as a license plate. According to WMUR:
The Department of Motor Vehicles said the plate’s message was offensive to good taste. But the justices said the standard is unconstitutionally vague because it is “so loosely constrained (that it) authorizes or even encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” …
The state Supreme Court went on to say in its opinion that while a separate part of the rule prohibits obscene plates, the phrase “offensive to good taste” is not defined in the regulation.
And that wasn’t the first time New Hampshire, through it’s DMV arm, has penalized people for exercising free speech on their license plates.
State v. Hoskin
In 1957 the legislature enacted laws that made it a misdemeanor to “knowingly obscure or permit to be obscured “the figures” on any number plate attached to any motor vehicle, whether issued by this or by another State.” In 1967 they added “an offense to so obscure or permit to be obscured “the figures or letters” on such a plate.”
After those two laws passed, the State prosecuted two people at least, Garlan E Hoskin and Susan Ely, for violating this section of RSA. They didn’t have offensive vanity plates. One had covered our Live Free or Die motto with tape on their license plate, and one had smashed it flat and painted over it. Little ironic isn’t it? Being prosecuted for living free?
The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire (112 N.H. 332 (1972)) where the defendant’s appeal was denied. The NH Supreme Court held that the State had the right to enforce this law.
Wooley v. Maynard
Just two years after the New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld Hoskin’s conviction, George Maynard was charged with the same violation. He too had put tape over the “Live Free or Die” lettering on his vehicle’s registration plates. Three weeks later he was charged a second time, and a week later for a third time.
He defended himself pro se in all three cases. The first charge ended with a $25 suspended fine. The second charge ended with a sentence of 6 months in Grafton County House of Corrections, all suspended as long as he paid the $50 fine from this charge and the $25 fine from the first charge. George refused as a matter of conscience to pay the fine, and was sentenced to 15 days in jail in lieu of payment, of which he served the whole time.
The Maynards sued New Hampshire in Federal Court over this sentence, and won. Then, the State appealed to the Supreme Court, and the State lost.
In a 6–3 decision, the Court held that New Hampshire could not constitutionally require citizens to display the state motto upon their vehicle license plates. Chief Justice Burger, writing for the Court, found that the statute in question effectively required individuals to “use their private property as a ‘mobile billboard’ for the State’s ideological message”. The Court held that the State’s interests in requiring the motto did not outweigh free speech principles under the First Amendment, including “the right of individuals to hold a point of view different from the majority and to refuse to foster … an idea they find morally objectionable”. The state’s interest in motor vehicle identification could be achieved by “less drastic means”, and its interest in fostering state pride was not viewpoint-neutral.
|Wiki
PB4WEGO
Wendy Auger is fighting her recall. If history is our guide, she will win, and the State would be wise to back down now, before it is made to look the fool again.
Don’t forget to Pee Before We Go.
