A Las Vegas man won a courtroom battle Wednesday with the Nevada
Department of Motor Vehicles over his "HOE" license plate, which the agency
tried to cancel on grounds that he was using a slang reference to
prostitutes.
The high court said the DMV based its
opposition to William Junge's plate on definitions found in the web-based Urban
Dictionary, which includes user contributions. Justices ruled that the
contributed definitions "do not always reflect generally accepted definitions
for words".
Junge, whose case was pursued by the American
Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he got the "HOE" plate in 1999 for his
Chevy Tahoe, after being told "TAHOE" wasn't
available.
"It's nonsense," Junge said of the state
agency's efforts to pull his plates. The 62-year-old said he was referring to
his vehicle's model and not to prostitutes with his plates, adding: "That was
their interpretation. Shame on them."
The high court said
Urban Dictionary "allows, if not encourages, users to invent new words or
attribute new, not generally accepted meanings to existing
words".
But "a reasonable mind would not accept the Urban
Dictionary entries alone as adequate to support a conclusion that the word 'HOE'
is offensive or inappropriate", the justices
wrote.
Rebecca Gasca of the ACLU of Nevada said the
attempt by a DMV supervisor to cancel Junge's license plate violated
constitutional First Amendment protections. Junge dropped out of the litigation
after the DMV appealed to the Supreme Court, but the ACLU continued the
fight.
"While the Urban Dictionary might be an
entertaining website about the English language, the court acknowledged it's not
a reliable source for DMV decision-making about whether a license plate is
vulgar," Gasca said.
In written briefs submitted to the
state Supreme Court, an attorney for the DMV argued there was no First Amendment
violation and the state has a reasonable basis for regulating vanity plates on
vehicles. It also said the term "hoe" was derogatory toward
women.
AP