Tennessee Supreme Court Rules State Can Revoke Personalized ’69’ License Plate Because It’s Government Speech
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that personalized license plates are government speech and not subject to the First Amendment’s ban on viewpoint discrimination.
At the center of the case was plaintiff Leah Gilliam’s personalized Tennessee license plate, “69PWNDU,” which she held for more than a decade before the state revoked it in 2021 on the grounds that it was offensive. Gilliam filed a civil rights lawsuit, arguing that the underlying state law used to revoke her plates was unconstitutional on its face.
Although the Tennessee Supreme Court noted that most other courts considering the issue had come to contrary conclusions, it nevertheless upheld the state’s regulations: “Applying the three factors that the United States Supreme Court has traditionally employed in its government speech precedents, we conclude that personalized alphanumeric combinations on Tennessee’s license plates are government speech,” the court wrote.
Gilliam’s attorney, Daniel Horwitz, a Nashville civil rights litigator, says in a statement to Reason that Gilliam will be appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“There is a reason why nearly every other court to adjudicate this issue has concluded that personalized license plates are not communicating secret government messages,” Horwitz says, “and we will be asking the United States Supreme Court to review the Tennessee Supreme Court’s error.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that Texas could deny a group’s application for a specialty license plate design showing the Confederate flag. However, most lower courts interpreting that decision have held that, while government-ru
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