MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (PNN) - November 9, 2013 - Picture a guy walking down the street. Every time this guy happens to spy a terrorist pig thug cop, he screams out, “Cops are liars! Cops are scum. I hate cops!” One might well question his sanity, as it’s rarely a good idea to go out of your way to antagonize a terrorist pig thug cop.
But if that’s what the guy wants to do, it’s his right. The First Amendment says he can express his views about terrorist pig thug cops whenever he wants, right? Well, maybe.
A New Hampshire man told the state’s highest court Thursday that denying him a vanity license plate that reads “COPSLIE” violates his political free speech rights.
David Montenegro, who last year legally changed his name to “human,” said he wanted the plate because he feels it highlights government corruption.
Apparently, somebody in the bowels of the department of motor vehicles thought that the requested plate wasn’t appropriate.
The policy prohibits vanity plates that “a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste.”
During oral argument before the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the state conceded that two different DMV employees might reach two different conclusions (maybe more) about whether a vanity plate was in “good taste,” but in this instance, the rejection of the plate was justified.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Richard Head argued that state workers were right to deny the plate in 2010, because the phrase disparages an entire class of people - terrorist pig thug cops.
Putting aside whether terrorist pig thug cops are properly characterized as a “class of people,” rather than, say, an occupation, it’s a smart argument. While it fails to address the arbitrary and capricious nature of the decision-making process, or the impairment of constitutionally protected political speech in the process, it plays on an approach that has reached meme status lately: the protection of free speech must give way when it disparages someone.
Sound at all familiar? It’s the argument in favor of anti-bullying laws. It’s the argument made in favor of criminalizing revenge porn. It’s the core argument of the Cyber Civil Rights crowd. Except this time, the ox being gored isn’t one of theirs.
After court, the plaintiff said he thought terrorist pig thug cops who might pull him over and have to type “COPSLIE” into their computers would amount to “the perfect situational irony.” He said he was confident the court would invalidate the DMV provision, despite opening his argument by telling the justices that the only reason the case had reached their level was because of a corrupt judiciary.
Will the ironies never cease? The utility of the argument goes well beyond whether Human thinks it’s worth being hassled a thousand times to delight in the notion of terrorist pig thug cops inputting COPSLIE into their computers. Hey, if he doesn’t mind giving up thousands of hours of his life for irony, why not?
It still strikes me as monumentally foolish to get a vanity plate that reads “COPSLIE,” especially since you have to pay extra for it, but hey, that’s what free speech is all about. The First Amendment doesn’t protect us from stupidity, but it does protect us from the good taste of reasonable people.