‘Sneaky swearing’: Why Illinois rejected 335 vanity plates requests last year
They might have been salaciously creative, but more than 300 salty expressions failed to make the grade as Illinois license plates last year.
Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced Wednesday his office had rejected 335 vanity and personalized license plate requests in 2024 for inflammatory or crude language, or because they were too difficult to read.
“Illinoisans consistently display a great deal of creativity when choosing their customized license plates, but the plates that hit the road must meet the standards of good taste and decency,” Giannoulias said in a statement.
“Our team are well-versed in lecherous language and sneaky swearing, all of which are rejected and placed on our permanent prohibited list.”
The 335 denied requests comprise less than 1% of the 60,537 submitted this year.
The Illinois Vehicle Code gives the secretary of state authority to nix anything “offensive to good taste and decency.” That includes a mix of letters and numbers deemed lewd or offensive such as expletives, racial epithets and expressions that connote drugs, sex or violence.
Some failed asks are just too difficult to read and could impede police, officials noted, citing actual plate requests like “MWMWMWM” and “OOQQOO.”
Over the years, the agency has a compiled a list of more than 8,015 declined license plate requests.
Personalized license plates, which are a combination of numbers and letters, cost drivers an extra $47 on top of regular fees. Vanity plates, which consist of only letters, are an additional $94.
The state has 825,359 vehicles registered with vanity or personalized plates. The majority, 64%, are personalized plates and 36% are vanity plates.
For information on the program, go to apps.ilsos.gov/pickaplate.