Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles will begin recalling specialty license plate depicting the Confederate battle flag following a federal judge’s decision last week to dissolve an injunction allowing the image. “Specialty license plates represent the government’s speech, and the Commonwealth may choose, consonant with the First Amendment, the message it wishes to convey on those plates”, Federal Judge Jackson Kiser wrote”.
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A 2001 injunction allowed the Sons of Confederate Veterans to place the Confederate flag on certain license plates in Virginia.
Roughly 1,700 plates exist in Virginia featuring the Confederate flag. The DMV will work with the heritage group to come up with a new flagless plate design, Brubaker said.
The current plates will be cancelled and owners will be asked to return them a postage-paid envelope for recycling.
“We’re working as quickly as possible to get this done”, Brubaker said.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said in a statement Thursday, “Because the injunction has been dissolved, DMV will begin the administrative process of recalling and replacing existing license plates with ones that comply with Virginia Law”.
He also said he anticipates the Sons of Confederate Veterans will challenge the recalling of the license plates.
“The Commonwealth’s rationale for singling out SCV for different treatment is no longer relevant”, the judge’s order said. “Because the underlying injunction violates that right, I have no choice but to dissolve it”. The white man charged in the slayings had posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos posted online before the killings.
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An article by the Richmond Times Dispatch found that 106 people in the Southwest Virginia region of the Tri-Cities have state issued license plates with the Confederate Flag.
