The Great License Plate Debate

The last time the Supremes debated license plates it was to decide if New Hampshire could force George Maynard to drive around with plates containing the state's "Live Free or Die" motto.

Usually when we think of courts and license plates it's about the Court deciding whether someone will have to MAKE license plates, so I guess this was a good thing ... or was it?

Proponents of "Choose Life" license plates, often accused of making everything a 'federal case', are taking their case to the Supreme Court.

No one is forced to use the plates, which are available in 19 states and seem intended to appeal to those who oppose abortion rights. They are so-called specialty plates, which are available for an extra fee to people who want to express themselves through their license plates.

Florida started the trend in 1987, when it sold a specialty plate to honor the astronauts who had died in the Challenger space shuttle disaster the year before. It raised millions of dollars for a memorial, and these days the Web site of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles offers many other options, including license plates celebrating Nascar, various sports (“Play Tennis!”) and parents who “make a difference.”

It also sells, for $20 extra, a bright yellow plate with the cartoonish faces of two smiling children and the words “Choose Life.” The state says it raised more than $33 million from specialty plates in the 2007 fiscal year and turned most of the money over to private groups.

The “Choose Life” plate generated about $800,000 that year. A state law requires that the money raised from those plates, after administrative expenses are deducted, be given to adoption agencies. The law forbids sharing the money with groups offering “counseling for or referrals to abortion clinics.”

Now this is where I have a problem with these plates. If a state wants to offer speciality plates as a way to increase revenue, then so be it. I'm not crazy about it, but I could maybe live with it if the money were being used to pay for school books or computers, feed or shelter the homeless, or for the general well being of a community -- you know, for things like roads and stuff.

But I draw the line at making a state agency -- in this case the Department of Motor Vehicles -- merely a funding stream for causes I don't necessarily agree with. I think domestic terrorist groups like the "right to life" organizations proposing these plates need to find some other way to fund their fake agencies/clinics -- or close their doors.

It has been a long trip from “Live Free or Die” to “Choose Life.” The old case involved the question of what the government may force people to say. The new one asks what it must allow people to say.

I think it's more than just about what people are allowed to say. I think it's also about using the government as a funding vehicle (all puns intended) for organizations that would like nothing more than to drive some women over a cliff.