13 Hilarious Vanity Plates Rejected by Michigan SOS in 2021
Have you ever seen a personalized Michigan license plate and thought "How did they get away with THAT?"
Maybe it's a cleverly disguised obscenity or something *racy*... well, not all vanity plate requests make it through.
Michigan SOS Rejected More Than 100 Plates in the First Half of 2021
The Michigan Secretary of State does have rules about this sort of thing. Apparently SOS denied 118 requests in the first six months of 2021, The Lansing State Journal learned via a public records request.
What CAN You Put On A License Plate in Michigan?
There are some basic guidelines issued by the Secretary of State for Michigan license plates:
- Spaces are allowed and are counted as characters
- The letter 'O' is not permitted. The number '0' will be substituted
- Only letters A-Z and numbers 0-9 are allowed on a personalized plate
- Symbols such as '! @ # $ % ^ & *' are not allowed on a personalized plate
- All plates are subject to further department approval
What CAN'T You Put On A License Plate in Michigan?
According to The Lansing Sate Journal, Section 257.803B of the Michigan Vehicle Code gets more in depth about what's allowed on vanity plates. Plates can't have letters or number combinations that include or spell out:
- Profanity, obscenity or depictions of a swear word
- Sexually explicit or graphic; excretory-related or description of intimate body parts or genitals
- Descriptions of alcohol and its use, drugs and drug use, and illegal activities or substances
- Used to interfere with plate ID for law enforcement
- Used to disparage, promote or condone hate or violence directed at any thing or person
- Non-English words translated from unapproved words
- Anything that conflicts with the license plate numbering system
Basically, no swear words, sex stuff, poop stuff, booze or drug stuff - that doesn't mean Michiganders didn't try though. Below are 13 plates declined by Michigan SOS in 2021 that made me chuckle.
You can check out all 181 declined plates here.