Any professional titles or indications including MLA or MD are strictly forbidden, even if a qualified general practitioner or orthopedic surgeon. Also, apparently, manners and a smile can help in the registration of a questionable automobile vanity plate.
Salter continued, “Registry agents are the first line of defence… Our responsibility is to screen anything that comes in for a request, but every personalized plate request is reviewed by a motor vehicle specialist at Service Alberta.”
Now, noting the final plate listed as GRABHER, this looks as if a deliberate political message in light of comments about personal behaviour around and to women by the President of the United States.
However, the man who wanted the personalized plate was Troy Grabher. He wanted to have the family name on the car as a license plate. Troy is in the middle of a court battle over it, now.
His father, Lorne Grabher, had the same license plate title revoked, in Nova Scotia, in 2016 based on a complaint: a “socially unacceptable slogan” rather than the last name of a family with Austrian-German heritage.
Apparently, the license plate has been the subject of international news with the exhausting associated exhausting court battle.
Troy Grabher opined, “It was all over the news, and we were just flabbergasted. Like, how could this even happen? I think it’s pathetic that’s it come to this… I’m always worried about it. I mean, I have a sticker on the back of my car saying that it’s my last name so people are aware of it.”
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This issue has come up before with regards to a licence plate with some variant of “666” on it, and I’ll say the same thing I did then:
A licence plate is not private property, it is the property of the state. That means whatever you see on a licence plate is state-endorsed. The state is gracious enough to allow individuals to use state property to make personalized statements (usually for a fee, which goes into public coffers), but it remains state property. Which means the state has the final responsibility for whatever is on a licence plate.
It sucks to be that guy, but I think it’s patently obvious why the state can’t endorse a message that 99% of people are going to interpret as advocating or endorsing sexualized assault. It doesn’t really matter what the driver’s take on the meaning is.
If he really wants his name on the car, he’s got literally the entire rest of the car to broadcast it with, other than that small rectangle that belongs to the state.
I was in California once upon a time and remember seeing a plate saying clingus.