Missouri rejected almost 500 vanity license plates in 2022. Here's the list

You've got to love a good vanity license plate — a customized tag that makes you want to whip out your phone and snap a photo to share with friends.

Missouri's Department of Revenue receives hundreds of applications every year for personalized plates. But it doesn't approve all of them.

According to the department's rules, plates will be rejected that contain letters, numbers or combos of letters and numbers that are "obscene, profane, patently offensive or contemptuous of a racial or ethnic group, offensive to good taste or decency, or would present an unreasonable danger to the health or safety of the applicant, or other users of streets and highways, or of the public in any location where the vehicle with such a license plate may be found."

In 2022, that led to 471 applications being rejected — the full list of which the News-Leader obtained through an open records request.

Some of the rejected plate applications are fairly self-explanatory, such as a Jan. 18 application for "MURD3R," a Feb. 9 request for "V0YEUR" and a Feb. 10 ask for "DAMGRL." Others are more obscure, with a combination of numbers and letters that can be decoded into inappropriate, sexual or offensive phrases.

Another popular rejected phrase, through a variety of combinations and configurations, were expletives directed at President Joe Biden.

Click here to see a spreadsheet with the full list of rejected license plates, or scroll down to see it embedded. (Content warning: the list contains explicit and inappropriate language.)

Galen Bacharier covers Missouri politics & government for the News-Leader. Contact him at gbacharier@news-leader.com, (573) 219-7440 or on Twitter @galenbacharier.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Missouri rejected almost 500 vanity plates in 2022: here's a list