If proclaiming ILOVGOD on a North Dakota license plate is acceptable, a plate reading ISNOGOD should also be approved, a Fargo man is arguing after his application for the atheistic plate was rejected.
Brian Magee is appealing the rejection with higher-ups at the state Department of Transportation, asking them to either approve his plate or recall other plates already issued that have references to the divine.
"You can't have freedom of religion if the government picks one," Magee said Monday.
Magee, a 47-year-old who hosts an atheist radio show Saturdays on KNDS 96.3 FM, said he'd prefer to see all the personalized plates mentioning God pulled. He included pictures of three such plates in his appeal to the NDDOT he sent Thursday after being informed of the denial Wednesday.
"They need to use the metaphorical 10-foot pole and not touch religion," he said.
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Linda Butts, deputy director of driver and vehicle services, wouldn't discuss details of Magee's request because the appeal isn't yet settled. She said a decision should take a week or two.
ISNOGOD was initially rejected by the panel of six NDDOT workers that considers plate requests, Butts said. A different group is being formed to study the appeal and make a recommendation to Francis Ziegler, NDDOT's director.
"We just take a much broader, general look at how the decision was reached," said Butts, who said it was the first appeal of a plate denial in her three years on the job.
Departmental policy puts a number of specific limitations on personal plates. For example, swear words and vulgarity, references to illegal drugs or activity, and racial or ethnic slurs are off-limits, as is a word or term that is "patently offensive or contemptuous, prejudicial or incites lust, depravity or hostility."
The policy doesn't make any reference to religious messages. It's unclear how many personalized license plates, which account for about 46,000 of the 950,000 plates in North Dakota, make a reference to God, NDDOT officials said.
Case law on free-speech rights for vanity plates is not settled and often spurs legal challenges, said David L. Hudson Jr., a law professor and scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
A 2009 decision in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Dakota, could prohibit any restrictions hinging on the viewpoint expressed, said Hudson. That ruling gave an OK to specialty plates in Missouri reading "Choose Life," which two pro-choice state lawmakers scuttled.
"There's an argument they'd be discriminating," he said of denying Magee's request. "It's certainly not a plate I would ever have, but the First Amendment protects a lot of speech a lot of us don't like."
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Magee said the reason he was given for the rejection was that it might offend North Dakotans and end up being recalled.
The Rev. Matthew St. John of Bethel Evangelical Free Church of Fargo said he would be hard-pressed to oppose Magee's plate being approved.
"I probably find it more sad than offensive," he said.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
