By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
When Stacy Moore first got her personalized license plate, she saw her chosen message as little more than a cute play on her name.
In the 20 years since she attached the plate reading "XSTACY" to her burgundy Camaro, much has changed. For one thing, she now drives a TrailBlazer. For another, "ecstasy" has acquired a new meaning in the vernacular, evoking an illicit drug rather than simply a state of euphoria.
So Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles, which bans references to narcotics on personalized license tags, has told Moore to return the plate. Her response — 4GETIT.
"It's ridiculous," says Moore, an elementary school teacher and librarian who filed suit in August seeking to have the agency's decision reversed. "Being a librarian, I come into contact with censorship all the time and this is (it). … I want my plate."
About 9.3 million vanity license plates blare the personal peccadilloes, passions and politics of drivers throughout the USA. It's up to state motor vehicle departments to ferret out the acceptable from the offensive, a mission becoming ever more complicated in a text-messaging era in which once-innocuous combinations of letters and numbers now carry double meanings.
The rejection of some plates has triggered lawsuits such as Moore's as drivers assert a First Amendment right to mobile messages.
"All state DMVs face that challenge in trying to determine what is appropriate and what is offensive before they put that plate on the roadway," says Jason King, spokesman for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
...Despite the elaborate vetting process, the extra fee motorists pay for vanity plates boosts state revenue, officials say.
"Every time those plates renew, there's $25 that goes into the highway fund," DeModica says. "We're talking about a substantial amount of money."
Many motorists are deeply attached to their personalized messages, says Stefan Lonce, a graphic designer writing a book titled LCNS2ROM-License to Roam: Vanity License Plates and the Stories They Tell.
"Behind every vanity license plate, someone's trying to tell a story," Lonce says. "They're a way to convey a message. That's why people are so passionate."
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