PennDOT issues many vanity license plates annually, but it also rejects countless applications, from the puerile to the racist, according to a staff report from City & State Pennsylvania.

Over at PennDOT, it’s somebody’s job to check the thousands of vanity license plate applications annually and pull out the bad seeds.

Each application has to abide by a set of rules that ensure that they do not offend or confuse other drivers, or in many cases, copy them.

Motorists can choose any combination of a maximum of seven letters and/or numbers to make a personalized license plate they like and believe will stand out on busy roads.

Recently, the agency published a “Do Not Issue” list of unacceptable configurations. The list is long and unsurprisingly lewd. Last year, hundreds of thousands of personalized applications were rejected because they were misleading to police, profane, lascivious, obscene, or vulgar, too similar to another plate, or had been previously issued

Other rejected submissions were related to drugs, alcohol, organized crime, or other illegal activities, among many other reasons.

Some of the examples include EVILSOB, FLA5HME, DADDYAF, and ELOH55A (which is a backwards-spelling of “a-hole”).

Read more about denied personalized license plate applications in the City & State Pennsylvania.

Change proposed for new Pennsylvania license plate law.

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on DELCO Today in April 2023.