These vanity license plates were rejected by Connecticut's DMV

This story contains language some readers may find crude or offensive.

Last year, a resident from Connecticut submitted an application to display the license plate F4RTBOX on their vehicle.

Another request was filed for a license plate to read BIGSEXY, while a third submission sought to convey animosity towards others on the road with the license plate IH8YOU.

In each case, the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles denied the proposal.

Those applications were among 105 requests for vanity license plates the DMV rejected from January 2022 to March 2023.

Most of the rejected plates contained some sort of profanity or crude language, according to data obtained by CT Insider.

There are a few reasons why plates are rejected, according to DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera.

If someone else already has the vanity plate, it could be rejected. Other reasons for rejection include if the plate exceeds the seven character limit or if it's offensive.

"In today's day and age, we have to be careful how [the plate] reflects on individuals, in regards to being offensive to individuals," Guerrera said.

A team at the DMV reviews each vanity license plate submission, he said.

They use Urban Dictionary and Google to vet submissions to see if they might be inappropriate or contain offensive words and phrases, according to Guerrera.

If some team members flag a plate for being inappropriate, they have a conversation on whether or not it should be rejected.

"My philosophy is when in doubt, throw it out," Guerrera said.

If the plate submission is rejected, the resident will receive communication from the DMV either by email, letter or phone, according to Guerrera.

In addition to reviewing new requests for vanity plates, the DMV also monitors ones approved in the past.

A vanity plate that was accepted years ago, may not be acceptable today, Guerrera said. If that's the case, the commissioner has the power to "pull that plate" from the road, he said.

The DMV finds out about these plates by someone calling the commissioner's office and saying they saw a plate they found was offensive. Guerrera will then have his team review the plate and when it was issued to decide whether to remove it from the road.

Other plates the DMV rejected between January 2022 and March 2023 included five different variations of "Oath Keepers," the name of a far-right militia.

The plate submission GAYPWR was also rejected.

"Both plate requests were reviewed and denied," Shaun Formica, a spokesperson for the DMV, said in an email. "It is the DMV's position that when the word power is paired with another word, for example, with any race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation it could be found to be offensive."

In Georgia, a man won a lawsuit against that state's Department of Driver Services after they rejected his request for a GAYPWR vanity plate.

Here are some other plates the DMV rejected:

The DMV accepted nearly 9,000 vanity license plate applications from January 2022 to March 2023, not including renewals.

In 2022 alone, the DMV received about $513,000 in revenue from those plates.

Guerrera said the revenue is filtered into the state's special transportation fund, which is primarily used to support the financing for the state highway and public transportation projects as well as operate the Department of Transportation and DMV.

See the full list of accepted plates below:

The Connecticut DMV also offers a specialty license plate program that issues plates with unique backgrounds on behalf of nonprofit organizations. Nearly 3,000 speciality plates were issued in 2022, not counting renewals of specialty plates.

In 2022, the most popular plate type was for the Long Island Sound. The DMV recorded selling 907 of these plates, according to data. The plate costs $35, or $50 for a vanity plate with this background.

The one-time charge goes to the Long Island Sound Fund and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection distributes the money to schools, municipalities, environmental groups and other nonprofit organizations, which put the grants towards projects that benefit the LIS.

Other popular types included United We Stand plates, wildlife conservation plates, animal population control plates and police memorial plates, the data shows.

See how many specialty plates were issued below:

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Originally published on May 31, 2023