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I moved to Maine from Charlotte in 2010, and other than the temperature shock, I was surprised to see so many vanity license plates. While Virginia got the crown as the state with the most vanity plates, Maine drivers had the ability to slap almost anything they wanted onto the seven-character plates – until recently.
It was common to see F-bombs and lewd comments about moms on license plates for a long time. Seriously, there were almost no guardrails. PBS reported that the policy wore thin with the state, and officials recently recalled 274 plates with inappropriate language. Some, like the one with the vegan-friendly phrase “LUVTOFU,” could be interpreted as a sexual proclamation instead of something to do with bean curd. Others, like the ones mentioned earlier, leave no room for interpretation.
So far, 13 Mainers have appealed the decision to strip them of their beloved plates, including the person with the tofu plate and another with a slang word for a female dog. The man with the love of tofu points out that his car also has a number of bumper stickers about tofu that clarify the matter for those with dirty minds. “It’s my protest against eating meat and animal products,” Peter Starostecki told PBS after wrangling with a hearing examiner for the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Regardless of where you fall on the offended scale, Maine now finds itself in a challenging legal situation, now that it has actual standards like most states. That said, the state thinks the language used in its policy change is narrow enough to prevent serious legal challenges. If someone is really hurt over losing their plates, they can appeal to the state Superior Court, but no one has taken their appeal that far yet.
Maine has only 1.3 million people, so it’s a big deal when the state makes national news. Unfortunately, the only other prominent automotive news story from the state was last year’s puzzling decision to begin de-registering Mitsubishi Delica vans. However, like the decision to re-introduce restrictions on license plate language, the state appears poised to walk that policy back by reclassifying the vans as road-legal instead of their current off-road vehicle status.
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