A Delaware woman who requested a vanity license plate in support of the cancer community was told by the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles that her message was not an appropriate representation of the state and would not be allowed.
The message? “FCANCER.”
Outraged by the DMV’s decision, Kari Lynn Overington, a cancer survivor and active member of the fight to end cancer, is taking the matter to court.
In December 2020, Overington applied for the vanity plate reading “FCANCER” and was approved, receiving the plate in the mail two months later. But in June 2021, she received a letter from the DMV stating that her license plate was being recalled because it “does not represent the division or the state in a positive manner,” according to a statement issued on Monday by the ACLU of Delaware.
Overington attempted to appeal the decision with state officials in the following weeks but was unsuccessful. This led her to file a lawsuit without a lawyer in federal district court in 2021. The judge recently rejected the state’s motion to dismiss the case, citing that it raised a “significant constitutional issue,” according to the ACLU.
On Monday, ACLU Delaware officially announced it would represent Overington in her case, now pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, on the grounds that her First Amendment rights to speech and expression are being censored.
“As a cancer survivor, the fight to end cancer is extremely personal to me. I was shocked when the DMV recalled my license plate because fighting cancer in our communities is imperative, and a message I assumed everyone would embrace,” Overington was quoted as saying in the ALCU statement on Monday.
According to the Delaware Department of Transportation, the Delaware DMV can deny issuance of a vanity plate at any time if it contains fighting words, hate speech, obscenity, profanity or vulgarity.
Despite this, plates in violation of DMV regulations have managed to make it through the process and adorn cars around the state.
A Twitter account created in February is dedicated solely to sharing vanity plates captured around Delaware. While some include comical phrases such as “DRIVING,” “PIEDPPR,” “OLDFOLK” AND “OK BYE,” others display messages that leave little room for interpretation.
Some of the explicit phrases found on Delaware tags include “BUTSTUF”; “BUSH911”; “69”; and “WWGIWGA,” a reference to the “where we go one, we go all,” slogan of QAnon, a political conspiracy theory and political movement.
“We do not maintain a list of words or phrases that are not permissible for vanity tags,” said Charles McLeod, director of communications for DelDOT. “We have a series of reviews that each request may go through.”
The process includes a review performed by a supervisor, a manager and a chief-level officer at the DMV.
“Oftentimes, there are disingenuous attempts to cover for what may be on the vanity tag,” McLeod said. “If someone is creative around creating a meaning, and we don’t discover the meaning, they get approved.”
If a license plate in violation of DMV criteria is discovered, it will be reviewed and, if necessary, recalled.
When Delaware Online/The News Journal filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all rejected vanity plate applications in 2021, it was denied for a number of reasons, including that the state claimed to not keep a list of rejected plates.
In 2020, Delaware Online/The News Journal reported on vanity plate owners and featured two plates that read “IMFNL8” and “MOM AF.”
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When inquiring about the approval of those plates in comparison to the recall on Overginton’s plate, McLeod said, “People are going to creative lengths to get around the system.”
The ACLU of Delaware says Delaware residents are allowed to express themselves through vanity plates, and this case “underscores the problems in the Delaware DMV’s current review process, which is subjective and has now led to censorship of protected speech.”
Overington stated that she was supported by other cancer survivors, relatives of those who died from cancer and other members of the community before her plate was recalled. Her main message with the plate was to help others impacted by cancer know that they are not alone.
“As my license plate declared that we have to fight cancer, I will also fight to make sure I can continue to provide that message to my community,” Overington’s statement read.
Contact Krys’tal Griffin at kgriffin@delawareonline.com.
