An image of a Utah vanity license plate surfaced on Twitter and has resulted in backlash for the car owner. Residents in the state are horrified that the driver was able to obtain the offensive and potentially r… vanity plate,“DEPORTM” which a high school teacher helped shed more light upon. Matt Pacenza is a high school English teacher from Utah,’
found an image of the offensive plate, and tweeted a photo of it along with the words: “Hey (Utah Driver License Division), how does this plate I just saw not your guidelines?”Many people responded to the image. Over one hundred people saw the vanity plate as a “horrific” oversight.
One person wrote, “that should never have been accepted by the DMV.”A CNN affiliate, KSL, contacted the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles. After some conversation, the reporter came into contact with the public information officer, Tammy Kikuchi, who confirmed that the plate was real and had been approved five years ago in 2015.
Offensive speech can sometimes be protected by the first amendment in the United States Constitution. Unless the speech institutes a threat or incitement to violence, it can pass such scrutiny as this one did. But when it comes to these vanity license plates, states have the power to institute some general rules to curb offensive messages from disrupting the public.
