NC Family Policy Council: Judge Halts License Plates

Special Report - November 30, 2011


Even though over 300 applications for the “Choose Life NC” specialty license plates have been submitted by North Carolina motorists to the State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) as required by law before new plates are produced, the DMV is currently prohibited from producing the plates, because of a federal judges’ ruling Monday.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF), United States District Judge James Fox issued a preliminary injunction on November 28 that bars the State from producing the “Choose Life” specialty license plates during an ongoing lawsuit brought by abortion advocates. In a lawsuit filed in September challenging the constitutionality of the “Choose Life NC” plates, the ACLU-NCLF argues that the General Assembly violated the First Amendment when it authorized a “Choose Life” license plate without also authorizing a plate supporting abortion. The ACLU-NCLF asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the issuance of the specialty plates until the case is decided, and Judge Fox granted that request in his order on Monday.

The lawsuit filed by the ACLU-NCLF alleges that the State is “engaging in viewpoint discrimination” by not also producing a pro-abortion plate. It centers on the General Assembly’s rejection this summer of six proposed amendments to HB 289-Authorize Special Plates (the bill that authorized a “Choose Life NC” plate), which would have added specialty plates with the words, “Trust Women, Respect Choice” or “Respect Choice” to the license plates available for motorists to purchase.

ACLU-NCLF legal director, Katy Parker, applauded Judge Fox’s ruling in a press release. “The state should not be allowed to use its authority to promote one side of a debate while denying the same opportunity to the other side,” Parker said. “We look forward to continuing our arguments in this case, and hope the court agrees that the First Amendment prohibits the blatant type of viewpoint discrimination the state has proposed through this one-sided license plate scheme.”

To date, 30 states, including North Carolina, have approved “Choose Life” specialty license plates. North Carolina’s plate was finally approved by the General Assembly as one of several specialty plates approved in HB 289, after nine years of legislative inaction on similar measures. Several lawsuits related to the “Choose Life” plates have been filed nationwide, with the courts ruling different ways.

On November 8, a federal district judge in New York ruled in favor of the “Choose Life” plate, in a lawsuit brought by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) against the state for its refusal to approve the Children First Foundation, Inc.’s design for the specialty license plate. As recently as 2008 and 2009, federal appeals courts have ordered and upheld the issuance of the “Choose Life” plates in Arizona and Missouri. Additionally, lawsuits challenging the issuance of the plates have ultimately failed in states such as Florida and Tennessee. However, in 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a case involving a similar law authorizing “Choose Life” license plates in South Carolina, that the law was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, because the legislature authorized only one viewpoint. South Carolina then passed a law that allows an agency to apply for private plates after paying a fee and providing a certain number of applications.


“It is unfortunate that the court has halted production because the General Assembly did not authorize a plate with an opposing viewpoint,” said Bill Brooks, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council. “Pregnancy resource centers should not be denied the income that will come from these plates. They have already lost thousands of dollars, because legislative opponents never would allow the bills to be considered. Opponents of the plates could have introduced legislation during the more than a decade that ‘Choose Life’ plate authorizing legislation was proposed, yet they never did so. Only when it appeared that the ‘Choose Life’ plate legislation would pass did the opponents propose their own plate.”
 
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