A Dallas, Tex. man is peeved after he was reportedly told that his anti-Trump vanity license plate will be cancelled because it bears a “derogatory” message.
Bill Moore’s plate features the phrase “LOKHMUP,” Fox 4 News reported.
It’s a masculinized version of one of President Donald Trump’s most common barbs toward Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election campaign — “Lock her up” has since become a popular chant among Trump supporters at his Make America Great Again rallies.
READ MORE: Trump supporters chant ‘Lock her up!’ at rally, hours after bomb mailed to Hillary Clinton
Moore has had the plate since March 2017, but an unknown Dallas resident recently took umbrage at it and called the Texas DMV to complain that the plate was offensive.
The DMV agreed.
In a letter, officials told Moore that his plate violated state guidelines because “it may be viewed as derogatory,” the Dallas Morning News reported.
According to the Texas DMV code, a derogatory term is one that “is demeaning to, belittles, or disparages any person, group, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or refers to an organization that advocates such expressions.”
A DMV spokesperson told Fox 4 News that the female version “LOKHRUP” is also unavailable to use for the same reasons.
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Moore was told that his plate will be cancelled within 30 days, and that he can choose another personalized plate at no cost or appeal the decision.
He says he’ll appeal because he doesn’t understand why there are different rules for the president and for ordinary folks like him.
“Donald Trump screams ‘Lock her up!’ at every rally. I don’t understand how he can do that, but I can’t,” Moore told the Dallas Morning News.
“It doesn’t say, ‘Shoot him up,'” he told NBC 5. “It doesn’t have anything that would talk about violence or anything I would consider derogatory. It’s just my personal opinion of how I feel about this presidency and administration.”
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He added that he’d be interested in knowing whether the DMV official who made the decision is a registered Republican or Democrat.
However, there appears to be legal precedent for the DMV censoring license plates that are deemed offensive.
In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas DMV was within its rights to reject a license plate featuring the Confederate flag, “because Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech.”
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