The average license plate, like a muddled Rorschach test, is often an indecipherable jumble of numbers and letters. Granite Staters like to add a little more flair.

Each year, several thousand New Hampshire drivers apply for vanity plates intending to make a personal statement on the road. In fact, nearly one out of every five vehicles registered here zips around with amusing, creative and sometimes obscure messages, making New Hampshire one of the most popular states in the country for vanity plates.

What you won’t see on the road are plates deemed too vulgar for public consumption. Last year, 342 requests for vanity plates out of 26,441 total applications were denied for a variety of reasons, according to public records from the Division of Motor Vehicles.

The Monitor requested and received all vanity license plate applications rejected by the DMV in 2024 as part of Sunshine Week.  

Last year, the DMV updated what director John Marasco said was a “substandard” policy for evaluating vanity plate applications. The new policy, which is posted online for all to see, prohibits references to intimate body parts, sexual acts, expletives, illicit drugs or illegal activity and language that incites violence or hate. 

“Vanity plates are important, people want them, they raise money for the state, it's a freedom of speech issue and it's a feel-good thing for the DMV. But it also, in the select few cases, could be exploited,” Marasco told the Monitor. 

Plates can be rejected for simple reasons, like having more than seven characters or including two ampersands, but they can also get denied for the content of the message they convey.

2024 was a big year for references to the Hawk Tuah meme, a man-on-the-street interview involving the simulation of a sexually explicit act. The video spiraled through magnitudes of internet virality in June 2024, and between July and August, the New Hampshire DMV received and rejected 13 variations of a “HAWK2AH” vanity license plate application.

On July 10 alone, four drivers from Milford, Swanzey, Seabrook and Atkinson applied for similar plates: HWKTUA, HWKTU, HWK2R and HAWKTUH respectively, according to the Monitor’s review of rejected plates. These were flagged for profanity or obscenity. 

Also popular were variations of “FA+FO,” shorthand for “F--- around and find out,” applications that were also rejected for the use of profanity. 

A vanity plate review committee weeds out applications that violate the DMV’s policy and sends recommendations to Marasco for his final decision. Marasco said he will often call rejected applicants to discuss his reasoning and to workshop an alternative that doesn’t violate the rules.

It isn’t always patently obvious what a mumbo-jumbo arrangement of letters and numbers could mean or why a seemingly inoffensive application might get rejected. Deputy Director Janet Bouchard, who sits on the vanity plate review committee, explained that the committee is comprised of seven DMV employees of varying ages, genders, races and backgrounds. One member also speaks Spanish.

Together, the committee members form a moral firewall to filer the more than 800 applications the division receives each week. 

“Some of them make us laugh. Some of them make us think. We really have to dig in and see what we think this means,” Bouchard said. The measuring stick for each application often comes down to the question: Would a reasonable person find this offensive?

While the vast majority of plates get approved, rejected applicants can appeal the department’s judgment. Internally, Marasco said he consults with the Department of Safety’s legal counsel and the Attorney General’s office if he reaches an impasse. 

Out of the rejected requests for plates, the DMV received 16 appeals — six appeals were revised and ultimately approved, eight were upheld and two appeals were altered or withdrawn. 

Last year, before the new policy was formalized, one racist New Hampshire vanity plate was recalled after the DMV received incensed complaints. 

“Some of the posts were, ‘I can't believe the New Hampshire DMV would allow a plate like that out on the road. What a disgrace for the state of New Hampshire,’ and it had a negative reflection on the DMV,” Marasco recalled. 

Now in his third year as director, Marasco said he’d always thought there was a need to institute a vetted, comprehensive vanity plate policy. “But once that happened, it was very clear that we need to do a better job.”

For a complete list of all 343 rejected vanity license plates and a slideshow of some eye-catching rejections, visit Concordmonitor.com.

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