Kahn v. Department of Motor Vehicles, 16 Cal. App. 4th 159

Surely this is good for a laugh...

"Petitioner is a certified court reporter employed by the Culver City Municipal Court. In approximately 1972, when petitioner received her shorthand reporting license and launched [***2] a new career in midlife, her nieces and nephews asked her to show them the court reporting shorthand symbols for the phrase, "if you can." This phrase had great personal meaning to petitioner, in that her mother had adapted a [**8] song using the phrase from the story of "The Little Engine That Could." Petitioner had used this phrase as a motivator throughout her life. Her nieces and nephews purchased a personalized license plate for petitioner which bore the court reporting symbols "TP U BG," which can be translated as "if you can." She used this license plate thereafter on a series of automobiles.

In 1989, Pamela Reed completed a "customer inquiry form" at the state fair in which she registered a complaint concerning the following license plates: TPUBG, TPUBGIT, TPUBGOF, TPUBGU and TPUBGUP. She noted: "In stenographic shorthand TP=F [and] BG=CK." She demonstrated that "TP U BG" thus would read as "F." "U." "CK" or "K." and stated that this was "not exactly what should be on our roads." After the DMV received this information, it asked petitioner to surrender her license plates.

...Petitioner argues it is not enough that the translation of the court reporting symbols as the four-letter epithet be offensive; there must also have been [*170] evidence that "TP U BG" in itself is offensive. This is the equivalent of arguing that, in [**13] order to be rejected as a license identification symbol, "puta" must be understood as offensive in that form by all those who know no Spanish and thus cannot translate it as "whore."