page_title: Vehicle registration plates of the United States
section_title: Vanity plates
hierarchical_section_title: Vehicle registration plates of the United States / Vanity and specialty plates / Vanity plates
caption_attribution_description: English: 2003 Washington DC KSTREET Vanity License Plate
context_page_description: In the United States, vehicle registration plates, known as license plates, are issued by a department of motor vehicles, an agency of the state or territorial government, or in the case of the District of Columbia, the district government. Some Native American tribes also issue plates. The U.S. federal government issues plates only for its own vehicle fleet and for vehicles owned by foreign diplomats. Until the 1980s, diplomatic plates were issued by the state in which the consulate or embassy was located.
  The appearances of plates are frequently chosen to contain symbols, colors, or slogans associated with the issuing jurisdiction. The term license plate is frequently used in statutes, although in some areas tag is informally used. The official three letter DSIT international code attributed to the United States is USA.
context_section_description: In each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, motorists are given the option of extra-cost vanity plates (also known as "personalized" or "prestige" plates), which are license plates with a custom serial (sequence of letters and/or numbers). Generally, vanity plates may not contain profane or obscene messages, although standards as to what constitutes an unacceptable message vary widely among issuing jurisdictions. Namely, the state of Maine has no censorship of vanity plates at all, provided they do not promote hate or violence. In California, motorists may order symbols—a heart, hand, plus sign, or star—on one type of specialty plate. Other states, such as New Hampshire and North Carolina, also permit the use of certain punctuation symbols. The state of Virginia offers more than 200 unique designs for license plates. A tenth of all U.S. vanity plates are in Virginia (which has 1.6 million vanity plate registrations), giving it the highest concentration of vanity plates issued by a state.
  Certain classes of vanity plates may require proof of authorization, such as a person obtaining an amateur radio plate with their call sign must show their amateur radio license.  Persons obtaining disabled veteran or Medal of Honor or Purple Heart medal recipients must show proof of their disability and military service or their award of the specific medal, respectively.
  Vanity plates sometimes cause unexpected difficulties for their owners. In 1979, a Los Angeles resident received 2,500 parking citations from throughout the state because the DMV's computers matched his plate, “NULL", with citations for cars without license plates. Other such cases have been reported for plates that say "MISSING", "NOTAG", "VOID", "NONE" and "XXXXXXX".
caption: A KSTREET license plate from Washington, D.C.
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