Georgia Sued for Banning 'GAYGUY' Vanity Plate

Apparently, Georgia wants people to drive straight. Two free-speech lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the commissioner of the state's Department of Driver Services, after the department rejected a series of vanity plates including "4GAYLIB," "GAYPWR," and "GAYGUY," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. "It’s not like I was asking for something that was vulgar or over the top," says James Cyrus Gilbert, who requested the plates. "Denying someone the right to put gay on their tag, that's political."

In addition to nominal damages, the suit seeks to force the state to approve the plates, and to have the entire approval process declared unconstitutional. The suit was filed last week, just hours after the Journal-Constitution published a story about the state's arbitrary plate approval process—a graphic shows, for example, that the state accepted plates for "BEERMAN" and "DRBIBLE" while rejecting "BEERUN" and "BIBLE." (More Georgia stories.)