Driver sues state for rejecting religious license plate
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By Alan J. Keays Herald Staff - Published: January 20, 2005
A challenge to the state policy on restricting vanity license plates has reached biblical proportions.
Shawn Byrne of West Rutland filed a lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Rutland after the state Department of Motor Vehicles rejected his request for a vanity license plate, "JOHN316," because of its religious reference.
The lawsuit against the DMV comes on the heels of another legal battle over a license plate waged by a Wallingford woman two years ago when she wanted her vanity plate to read "Irish."
The woman's request was initially rejected because the department considered the word ethnically offensive.
She eventually took her case all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court, where she prevailed.
Now, Byrne, 43, is taking his case to court. The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that states it defends religious liberty, has taken up his case.
"This is a violation of his free expression rights," Joshua Carden, an ADF attorney, said Wednesday. "We'll be happy when Vermont's license plates are open to all citizens regardless of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof. That's what we're aiming for."
The lawsuit alleges that the action by the DMV is in violation of Byrne's First Amendment rights.
"The Constitution does not permit DMV officials to discriminate based upon the applicant's point of view," Carden said. "Religious speech is not inferior to secular speech. The department's actions are clearly unconstitutional."
Carden said his client is only seeking to uphold his rights to free expression on his license plate.
"We're not seeking big money damages," he said.
According to the lawsuit, Byrne applied to the state DMV for a vanity plate on April 20, for his Ford pickup.
The application asked for Byrne to list three choices for his vanity plate. Byrne listed, "JOHN316," "JN316" and "JN36TN." The application also asked Byrne what each selection represented, and in each case he wrote, "Bible passage."
Carden said "John 3:16" refers to a scripture passage, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
A month after applying for the plate Byrne received notice from the state DMV stating that all three requests had been turned down.
"It has been deemed to be a combination that refers to deity and has been denied based on that reason," the letter read.
Byrne appealed, but an administrative judge upheld the denial, the lawsuit stated.
The law allows DMV to reject a word or phrase considered offensive or confusing to the general public.
The regulations state that license plates are not be allowed to have a combination of letters or numbers that refer to any language to race, religion, color, deity, ethnic heritage, gender, sexual orientation, disability status or political affiliation.
Bonnie Rutledge, DMV commissioner, said Wednesday she had not yet seen the lawsuit.
"I don't know why it was turned down," she said. The commissioner did say that a vanity plate with three numerals cannot be issued. "If you get into three numerals, you get into regular-issue plates," she said. "Our plates are three letter and three numbers."
Rutledge said there are about 35,000 vanity plates issued in Vermont. Payment of an annual fee of $30, in addition to the annual fee for registration, is required for vanity plates.
Requests for such plates do sometime get turned down, she said.
"A lots of times they get turned because they're already issued out," she said. "To tell you which ones are turned down for any certain thing, I couldn't do that."
Contact Alan J. Keays at alan.keays@rutlandherald.com.