It’s starting to look bad as far as my appeal to the DMV goes. Their position is that they are statutorily bound to deny any license plate application that doesn’t meet 41-1a-411 and/or R873-22M-34. In other words, they aren’t allowed to use any discretion when issuing personalized plates. Even if they wanted to issue the plates, they couldn’t do so legally.
Even though it looks like my appeal will certainly fail, I’m still keeping it alive for now. I wrote letters to several state lawmakers–Senator Mike Dmitrich, Representative Brad King, Speaker of the House Marty Stephens, Lt. Gov. Olene Walker, and Gov. Leavitt–asking each one to review the situation and make some sort of allowance for anybody to have their last name on their license plate. My argument was that denying the license plate does more harm than allowing it, since the hundreds of people in the state of Utah with the last name Udink are much more offended now than the small handful of people who may be offended if they see the plate and take it out of context. Hopefully they can make a small change to the existing law that will allow the DMV to exercise a little discretion in special cases such as mine. My fingers are crossed, but I’m not counting on anything.