Arizona Banned License Plates

Why are there so many banned license plates in Arizona? What are the main reasons the license plates are being rejected in the State of Arizona? We have some useful information on this topic. To get all answers to your questions, continue reading this article.

If you live in the State of Arizona, then you know about some people’s imagination on vehicle license plate personalization. Personalizing plates means you make vanity plates with a combination of letters or numbers you wish. The law of Arizona allows you to request license plates with combinations that contain nothing different than numbers and/or letters.

Requesting vanity plates is a nice thing to do to save records on your vehicle that are very important for you. These might be dates, initials of names, age, or something else. The thing is, some people do not appropriately use vanity plates. They consider it a street wall to write a bad word on or a comments section to write down their poor intentions.

Consequently, there is an administrative body in the State of Arizona that is regulating and controlling the whole process. It does everything from receiving the vanity plates applications and accepting or rejecting them to producing and delivering license plates. This administrative body is the ADOT – Arizona Department of Transportation, the Motor Vehicle Division.

The Arizona Motor Vehicle Division produces and delivers the license plates in a short time as they work almost without holidays.

What are the main reasons for license plates refusal in Arizona?

The Motor Vehicle Division does not approve the plates in the following cases, according to the Arizona Administrative Code R17-4-310:

• If there is a hidden meaning that is irreverent or obscene,
• If the combinations mean breasts, genitalia, pubic area, buttocks, sexual functions, eliminatory functions, etc.
• When the combinations indicate something related to drugs and narcotics,
• If the meaning of the combination is offensive and disrespectful for a group of people (ethnic, religious, racial) or a single person.
• If the combination was rejected before for any reason or it is identical to another existing license plate in Arizona.

What are examples of banned license plates in Arizona?

Here we have gathered some real examples of combinations that were requested by the citizens in their license plate applications. We can’t say precisely what was the main reason for the refusal. As in Alaska, the DMV does not explain the main reasons for refusal. We can only assume their real meaning. As you will see from the examples, in most cases the citizens tried to write not the full words they meant but abbreviations. They even wrote numbers that look like letters instead of them. In these examples the words are even without vowels, to save space and to make the readability harder. Here are the examples:

• 696969, 666999, 669969, etc. – this has a sexual meaning.
• ANNUL, ANAL, ANUS, HOTNUTZ, EATVAG, VAGKING, etc. – again sexual meaning.
• HOTNUTZ, AWFAKIT, AWFUGIT, etc. – contains sexual or offensive meaning.
• Anything containing a combination of H8 is about hatred. This is what the committee prohibits.
• WITEPWR, JEWLIES, etc. – the committee rejects all combinations that contain anything about racism.

How much do the vanity plates cost?

In fact, the vanity plates are not expensive. If you want an ordinary personalized vanity plate, it will cost you only $25 in Arizona. In case you want a specialty plate, it will cost you about $8 – $25. If you order a license plate that is both personalized and special, it will cost you about $50.