Maine begins eradicating people naughty license plates

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine is cleaning up its roadways by getting rid of the flippin’ vulgarities from license plates.

The condition is enforcing new policies to get rid of f-bombs and other obscenities that appeared on vanity license plates right after the point out proficiently eradicated its evaluate system.

The state began issuing recall letters this month, with a handful every single working day. It will take a pair of months to entire the procedure.

Secretary of Condition Shenna Bellows is passionate about no cost speech as a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. But she said obscenities must not be on license plates, which are state home.

“What I would say to people who want to engage in objectionable or questionable speech: Get a bumper sticker,” she mentioned.

It can be a little bit of a headscratcher how a bunch of descendants of Puritans in a New England point out ended up placing some of the raunchiest messages on point out-issued license plates.

It started off when state lawmakers all-but-removed the overview in 2015 following a lawsuit efficiently qualified neighboring New Hampshire’s limitations on vainness license plates.

Maine’s laissez-faire approach authorized what Bellows described as a “wild wild West” in which motorists purchased vainness license plates with blushing references to sex functions or genitalia. Just one notorious license plate utilised a profanity that starts with the letter F, followed by the word “you.”

Very last 12 months, the Maine Legislature directed the Bureau of Motor Automobiles to reestablish policies for vetting license plates.

Maine’s new policies, which Bellows stated track intently with New Hampshire’s revised specifications, ban derogatory references to age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationwide origin, religion or disability. Also banned is language that incites violence, or is thought of profane or obscene.

A committee has been established up to critique vanity plate requests, alongside with problems by members of the public.

In Maine, there are about 124,000 vainness license plates on the roads in a state with about 1.3 million residents. Former estimates advised 400 offensive plates could be topic to recall, and nearly 40 remember letters had been issued as of midweek, officers stated.

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Comply with David Sharp on Twitter: @David_Sharp_AP