Alaska Banned License Plates

Have you ever heard about the Alaska DMV rejecting some license plates? We came here to tell you about Alaska Banned License Plates. But first, let’s make clear what a vanity plate is.

What are the license plates and why do they get banned?

Vanity plates are personalized license plates that have numbers and letters on them that can mean something. Vanity plates are pretty good if they make your vehicle unique. They are a nice way to express yourself by a short combination of letters and numbers. You can put some numbers (for example, a date or an age) that are important for you. You can place your name initials on your license plate and feel good about it.

However, not everyone thinks this way. Some Alaskans have applied for a license plate and requested a combination of letters or numbers that meant nothing but offense or a poor intention. Some of them, hopefully, don’t mean anything bad. But their vanity plates got rejected.

Consequently, the usage of vanity plates is controlled in the State of Alaska. The body that manages the requests for license plates is the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The DMV receives the requests of the citizens and accepts the vanity plates or rejects them.

What are common reasons for license plate refusal?

In brief, there are not many reasons why the DMV can reject your vanity plate. If this happens, this means that it goes against the Alaska Administrative Code, paragraph 92.120. The law declares that the Department of Motor Vehicles will not issue a plate that demonstrates:

• combination of numbers or letters that are identical to another combination in use on a vanity plate,
• if the combination contains more than 6 or less than 2 symbols
• symbols different than letters and/or numbers
• combination of symbols that have an offensive meaning for a religious, racial, or ethnic group or a single person,
• symbols in a combination that have sexual, immoral, poor intentions.

Nevertheless, it is pretty hard for the DMV committee to recognize a vanity plate as offensive. In most cases, citizens who put particular words or meanings in their license plates do this by making the reading harder. For instance, they write the word without vowel letters. They also put numbers that look like letters instead of them.

Some examples of Alaska Banned License Plates

We have gathered a few examples on Alaska vanity plates that the DMV committee has banned. We can only suppose the reasons why the committee rejected them. The DMV does not clearly explain the reason for their refusal.

• FKNMVN – contains the words “fucking moving”.
• KIDNPR – as we may assume, this is the word “kidnapper”.
• DMNSXY – we can see the words “damn sexy” here.
• 5UCKIT – the number 5 looks like the letter S, so, this means “suck it”.
• BCHBYE – it is clear that the person wanted to write the words “bitch, bye”.
• EATVAG – in English urban slang, “vag” stands for the word “vagina”. “Eat vag” is a pretty offensive word to put on a license plate.
• POLAK – this word that we have found in the list of rejected license plates stands for a disrespectful word used to name Polish people.
• H3NTAI – a genre of Japanese manga and anime portrayed by overtly sexualized actors and sexually explicit images and plots.

It is quite difficult to find out if there is an offense or a bad connotation in the plate for another reason as well. There are 20 distinct languages spoken in the State of Alaska. That is why the committee that makes decisions, must be multilingual to recognize a word to be offensive or not.

Do custom plates cost money?

In short, yes. They can cost from $30 to $100. Standard personalized license plates usually cost $30. You will pay more if the plate you order supports a cause. Some plates benefit, for example, Alaska Children’s Trust or the Blood Bank of Alaska or Adoption, etc. Choose the one you want!