Santa Claus may take care of the naughty list for people, but Santa (Alexi) Giannoulias takes care of naughty license plates in Illinois.

The Illinois Secretary of State rejected over 304 vanity and personalized license plates that were declared too obscene, hard to read or defamatory this year. The Secretary of State’s office received 54,768 requests for vanity and personalized plates in 2023.

Rejected plate requests this year included:

• EATBUTT
• BONER
• MILFS
• WOOPASS
• POOPSY
• DZNUTZ
• IOWASUX

“I appreciate the creativity and pride Illinoisans take in choosing their own customized license plates, but they must meet the standards of good taste and decency,” Giannoulias said. “We keep an eye out for anything tawdry, lewd or offensive, all of which are rejected and placed on our permanent rejection list.”

The Secretary of State’s Office oversees the process that Illinoisans use to request specific vanity or personalized license plates. A team of employees reviews each request. According to state law, the office can reject any application for personalized or vanity plates that “creates a connotation that is offensive to good taste and decency,” as stated in Illinois’ Vehicle Code.

The office identifies letter and number combinations that can be interpreted as lewd or offensive, including expletives, racial epithets, sex and drug references and mentions of violence. Most of the rejected plates had some sort of profanity or crude language. Plates like XKXKKXK or QOOQQOO were rejected this year because they are hard to read and could cause problems for law enforcement and license plate readers. Currently over 7,674 license plate combinations are considered offensive or difficult to read and have been added to the Secretary of State’s Naughty List.

A new vanity plate for Illinois vehicle owners that contains all letters costs an extra $94. Personalized plates that have a combination of letters and numbers are an extra $47. Currently 811,351 vehicles registered in Illinois have vanity or personalized license plates; 279,500 are vanity plates and 531,851 of the plates are personalized plates.

Most drivers use the Secretary of State’s Pick-a-Plate feature that allows them to type in different combinations of letters, or letters and numbers, to see if they are available for sale. (No word on if the license plate in our photo, “OICURAQT” or “Oh, I see you are a cutie” is available.)

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