Welcome to this month's medley of number plate news stories from abroad.
Tesla's number plates problems continue in Sweden
In December 2023, we reported Tesla's issues with the Swedish union IF Metall. The problems began when Tesla workers in Sweden requested that their wages be set according to Sweden's usual collective bargaining method. Tesla refused and Union members took industrial action. Furthermore, other Swedish workers took supporting, secondary industrial action in support of the union members at Tesla. Amongst those taking secondary action were postal workers, who refused to deliver number plates to Tesla.
Tesla sued the postal service and the Swedish Transport Agency in an effort to end the strike, which is the most substantial the manufacturer has yet had to face. In November 2023, a district court issued a provisional ruling that would allow Tesla to collect the number plates that the postal workers were refusing to deliver.
However, the ruling in Tesla's favour was challenged and overturned in December 2023 by an appeals court, so Tesla, in turn, appealed against that decision. It is difficult to be entirely certain how many appeals and counter appeals have occurred during this conflict, but the most recent development appears to be a ruling (supporting an earlier ruling) by the appeals court that the district court that initially ruled in Tesla's favour did not have jurisdiction in the matter.
We hope that's all clear.
Delaware number plate censorship ruled unconstitutional
In 2020, a Delaware woman who is both a cancer survivor and activist applied for a license plate reading 'FCANCER'. Kari Lynn Overington's application was allowed and her number plates arrived in due course. However, a few months later, Ms Overington received a letter from the Division of Motor Vehicles saying that her number was being withdrawn due to its offensive nature and that it shouldn't have been issued in the first place.
Ms Overington said that her plate meant 'fight cancer' and denied that it was offensive. She represented herself in court, claiming that the ban on her plate went against her right to free speech. Subsequently, the Delaware chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union aligned itself with her in the fight against the censorship of her number plate.
A district judge ruled that Delaware’s allowance of vanity plates chosen by applicants is not government speech: it is private speech by the person who requested the plate, and thus is protected by the constitution.
The judge said, “To suggest that the state of Delaware is speaking through the alphanumeric sequences on the numerous vanity license plates it issues, all with different messages, does not conform with common sense.”
The First Amendment does not permit the government to discriminate based on subjective viewpoint. The judge's opinion was that evidence indicated that officials withdrew the number because they felt it didn't represent the state and the Division of Motor Vehicles in a positive manner, and because they felt that the plate was offensive. Effectively, the judge ruled that the plate's withdrawal was based on subjective viewpoint and, therefore, unconstitutional.
The end result is that Ms Overington will get her FCANCER plates back and the state is temporarily banned from issuing any more vanity plates until regulations are updated to comply with the First Amendment.
We wonder if the case and its ruling may have implications for plate censorship in any other US states.
1 E and the enigmatic world of West Asian number plate auctions
Saudi Arabia may not boast as many super-expensive, headline-grabbing number plates as its neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, but when it does, they are worth waiting for.
In April, Middle East news media reported the auction sale of Saudi Arabia number plate 1 E. Sources were, as usual with West Asian auctions, few and far between but, so far as we could ascertain, 1 E's purchaser spent 24,150,000 Saudi Riyals (about £6.4 million) including taxes.
At first, reports seemed to give conflicting information about the price paid, with some saying 21 million Riyals and others saying 24 million. Eventually, we realised that both were correct: the lower figure was the hammer price and the higher was the price with tax added.
The absence of Arabic language skills in the Regtransfers editorial office certainly makes it more of a challenge to establish the facts about big sales in that part of the world.
At the time of writing, 1 E is the seventh most expensive number plate in our world rankings.
