Will 2025 be the year that Rhode Island lets drivers request vanity plates again?
That’s the goal, according to Division of Motor Vehicles officials.
“The process for restarting the program continues with the goal of opening applications in 2025,” spokesman Paul Grimaldi wrote in an email.
Rhode Island hasn’t issued any new vanity plates since February 2021, almost four years ago.
For those not keeping track at home: DMV administrator Walter “Bud” Craddock told WJAR in October 2023 that vanity plates should be back “within a year to 18 months at most.” Eighteen months will be up in May.
DMV assistant administrator Chuck Hollis, who authors The Providence Journal’s “Ask the RI DMV” column, said in November that he had “no new updates … but we are hoping that they will be offered again to the public sometime after the first of the year.”
Why Rhode Island is still not issuing new vanity plates
The DMV stopped accepting applications for new vanity plates in February 2021, almost four years ago.
The backstory: In 2020, the DMV tried to recall Tesla owner Sean Carroll’s “FKGAS” vanity plate. Carroll, a Scituate resident, said the tag meant “fake gas,” but acknowledged it could be read another way.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued on his behalf, prompting a federal judge to rule in February 2021 that the DMV’s vague and unevenly-enforced ban on “offensive” vanity plates was unconstitutional.
In response, the DMV stopped issuing new vanity plates, saying that applications would remain on hold until it came up with a new policy for reviewing plate requests. Coming up with the first draft of those regulations took two years.
The next step will be for the proposed regulations to go through the administrative rule-making process.
“DMV is finalizing regulations for review by the Office of Regulatory Reform to be followed by posting to the Secretary of State’s website for public comment,” Grimaldi said in an email.
Once the rulemaking process begins, the DMV will no longer be in control of the timeline.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Vanity plates in RI: Will they return in 2025?