Governor refuses to sign legislation creating new specialty plates

The Legislature approved 15 bills last session that would create new plates or allow extra time for sponsoring organizations to collect the necessary 1,000 signatures from people who promise to purchase them. They passed despite a pending lawsuit that attacks the system used to create them.

The bills still will become law without the governor’s signature. Such a refusal to sign is traditionally seen as a way of showing disapproval without resorting to a veto.

Bredesen spoke out against the specialty license plate system last year after lawmakers approved a “Choose Life” plate, which had been sought by anti-abortion activists. Bredesen allowed that plate to go into effect without his signature but expressed concern that the state was on a “slippery slope” in placing political message on government-sanctioned license plates.

“While each organization referenced in these bills is no doubt a worthy cause, this proliferation of plates illustrates the problem that I described last year,” Bredesen said in letters to House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh and Lt. Gov. John Wilder about the most recently bills.

“I continue to urge the Legislature to reconsider the unrestrained growth of specialty license plates.”

Following the “Choose Life” plate’s approval, the American Civil Liberties Union sued in federal court, asking that the system be declared unconstitutional because it allows lawmakers to discriminate by allowing “political speech” on one side of an issue, but not the other. No “pro-choice” license plate has been approved by the Legislature.

Bredesen has said he believes it’s likely the current law will be struck down. If that happens, charitable causes that now rely on the plates as a fund-raising device and the state Arts Commission would collectively lose about $11.5 million a year.

But the governor, in his budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, approved a provision that would use state dollars to continue that funding if a court voids the 116 plates now in existence.

Legislation that would have overhauled the specialty plate system was killed in a House subcommittee earlier this year. The bill would have permitted the state Department of Safety to issue a specialty plate to any charity that collected the necessary signatures.

Sponsors of the proposal said that shifting to an “administrative system” for plates would have undercut the legal argument of the ACLU’s lawsuit.

A hearing on the lawsuit is expected this fall.