Revoked 'Hate Plates' Restart Free Speech Debate

(April 23) -- Personalized or vanity license plates typically fall somewhere between sentimental and silly, but this week, a photo of license plates containing a coded message of white supremacy made the rounds on the Web before the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles formally recalled them.

Now, the person who photographed the "hate plates" and brought it to the attention of the wider public isn't so sure that the DMV did the right thing.

"I hate Nazis as much as the next guy," said Nik Y. "But the First Amendment is the First Amendment, and you should be able to express yourself no matter how much of a jerk you come off as when you do."

Nik, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his last name be withheld, was first drawn to the parked Ford pickup truck by the vehicle's elaborate and startling custom paint job: The back window is entirely covered by a Confederate flag decal; the tailgate has a large color image of the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the phrase: "Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11."

"Once I saw the tailgate, I immediately thought 'this requires a picture and needs to be shared with the world,'" Nik told AOL News. Moved by the "ridiculously scary" imagery, he snapped a photo on his mobile phone and uploaded it to the discussion-threads website Reddit later that night.

On Monday, his image of the truck went viral. Savvy Web commentators quickly identified several deliberate white power codes contained within the characters of the rear plate: "14CV88."

As they pointed out, "88" is a number prominently used by the Neo-Nazi movement to convey the phrase "Heil Hitler," since the eighth letter of the alphabet is "H."

The "14" references a 14-word-long statement: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children," a phrase coined by one David Lane, deceased co-founder of the violent white nationalist group The Order.

"CV" stands for "Confederate Veteran." The plate itself is also one of a special edition series created by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a nationwide, apolitical legacy organization composed of the male descendants of Confederate soldiers.

The group is explicitly anti-racist, according to spokesman Bragdon R. Bowling Jr., who told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Our organization is against any type of racial prejudice at all."

On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim-rights activist organization, lodged a formal complaint about the truck's plates to the Virginia DMV, citing their potentially "socially and racially disparaging content."

It was the fifth complaint the DMV had received about the "14CV88" plates since they were registered in 2005, according to DMV spokeswoman Melanie Stokes. In accordance with the agency's rigorous policies on issuing and revoking personalized plates, they had been under DMV review since the initial complaint. The agency decided to recall them even before receiving the latest complaint.

Now, if the vehicle owner refuses to turn in the plates within a 30-day grace period, Stokes said the DMV will dispatch its own officers to collect them.

She hopes it doesn't have to come to that, noting that the owner has the opportunity to order plates with a new personalized message, or can elect to let the state assign the owner a random number, which would include a $10 reimbursement of the original cost to personalize.

"We will always try to work with a customer," Stokes said. "Especially if their intent was not to be obscene or offensive."

Still, the DMV's move is at odds with what happenstance photographer Nik ever intended by posting his picture of the truck online. He wasn't even aware that the vehicle's plates had been recalled until speaking with AOL News.

"Going back to the First Amendment," he said, "I don't see anything here that is horribly illegal, just ignorant and stupid. I'm not standing up for the guy [or gal], I'm standing up for free speech. You're not supposed to be able to restrict it in America."

Virginia has, in-fact, been the site of ongoing, intense battles over how much freedom of expression is constitutionally permissible on government-issued vehicle identification. Part of that is likely due to the fact that the state has the highest percentage of personalized or special-series plates in the nation (21.7 percent of all registered vehicles, at last count).

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, for example, successfully sued the state in 2001 to force the government to issue its specialty plates emblazoned with the "Stars and Bars" decal.

In 2003, Slate touched upon the wider controversy caused by the Virginia House's approval of a "Choose Life" license plate series sponsored by an anti-abortion organization of the same name. The plates weren't made available to drivers until six years later because of extensive legal wrangling.

Meanwhile, as far as personalized plates go, Stokes said that vehicle owners do have a chance to appeal recalls and rejections via an "unbiased DMV hearings office." They can even go a step further and take their case to the state circuit court, an option that has been pursued only five times in Virginia's history.

"All five cases were won by the customer," she said.

She noted that four of the five cases concerned plates with religious messages, one of the highest categories of protected speech. The fifth was a pointed critique: "DMV SUX," which the court also let stand, much to the agency's chagrin.