A small PennDOT team Vets submissions against a “Do Not Issue” list.
Credit: NewHopeFreePress.com
While every driver has seen cringe-worthy vanity license plates, PennDOT maintains a “Do Not Issue” list containing thousands of phrases, words, numbers that drivers are prohibited from displaying on personalized license plates.
Pennsylvania license plates — some standard-issue, some optional — through the years. Collage by Asha Prihar. Photo sources from Wikimedia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
The list is used to vet every personalized plate request submitted by drivers, who pay a fee ranging from $82 to $200 for the special registration.
PennDOT’s website and past articles say configurations are flagged and denied if they include curse words, slang, euphemisms, certain political phrases, or language that might mistakenly suggest the vehicle belongs to a government agency.
The plates rejected by the department include a broad range of submissions deemed inappropriate for public display.
Profanity and Slang: BADASS, BAM-MOFO, DEEZNTZ, DADDY AF, DOGMILF, FCKIT, F WORK, GOT POOP, HAWK TUAH, JAG-OFF1, L0ST AF, PISS OFF, RAW DAWG, RIMJOB, SHIZNIT, THESLUT, TWAT, WAP, WIDE AZZ, WTF MATE, ABUSE, BUTT-MAN, CAMLTOW, HALN-ASS, H8 KIDS, IEATASS, I-SWALLOW, METH HED, ONLYFNS, P1MP, TINYPP, and YOU SUCK.
Drug-Related Terms: D00BIE and SICARIO.
A portion of River Road near New Hope Borough.
Credit: Tom Sofield/NewHopeFreePress.com
Political Messages: EF ELON, FK TRUMP, FJB46, FU BIDEN, FU-KAREN, FU-PPA, POTUS 47, and STALIN.
Nonsense: OOO, NOTAG, and WWWWWW.
Click here to read the thousands of rejected plates that PennDOT has reviewed. The list was obtained by Axios Philadelphia.
A small team of PennDOT employees working from a state office center along the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg are responsible for reviewing and rejecting these submissions, a 2015 article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review stated
PennDOT staff use various tools to analyze and screen plate requests, including Internet Acronym, Slang/Euphemism dictionaries, foreign language translations, and even checking how a configuration looks when read upside down or in reverse.
South Main Street in New Hope. File photo.
Credit: Charlie Sahner/New Hope Free Press
If staff require further clarification on a driver’s request, PennDOT says, they may contact the customer by phone. When a request is rejected, the customer receives a letter explaining the reason for the denial.
According to Axios, the list released earlier showed an increase in plate configurations that were requested and then denied by PennDOT over 2023.
Advertisement
