RICHMOND, Virginia — Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones will ask the US Supreme Court on Thursday, October 29, 2026, to review a federal appeals court ruling that a Lynchburg driver's revoked vanity license plate was private speech protected by the First Amendment — setting up a possible landmark fight over who controls the message on a government-issued plate: the state that owns it, or the driver who chose it.

Source: Potomac Local (reporting the Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Jones spokesperson Rae Pickett confirmed the office will file a petition for certiorari on October 29 in the case, Whateley v. Lackey. The filing is the news of this week; the dispute behind it has been running since 2023, through a DMV hearing room, a federal district court and a unanimous appeals panel that sided with the driver.

How a license plate reached the Supreme Court's door

Curtis M. Whateley of Lynchburg applied for and was issued the personalized plate "FTP&ATF" by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles in 2023, according to the ACLU of Virginia, which represents him. Court filings describe the acronym as meaning "f--- the police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives." The plate was displayed for about a year without incident — the DMV even re-issued it after noticing the "&" symbol had been left off — before a member of the public complained by email in May 2024 that the plate was "most offensive."

The DMV's Personalized License Plate Review Board then voted 9-1 to recall the plate, concluding, in the words of the court record, that it "could reasonably be viewed as profane, obscene, or vulgar" and could be used to condone or encourage violence. Whateley received replacement random plates, represented himself at an informal administrative hearing, and lost: the DMV upheld the revocation. He sued in federal court, arguing that Virginia Code section 46.2-726 — the law giving the DMV commissioner power over plate messages — is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad on its face, and that revoking his plate was viewpoint discrimination against protected political speech.

Two courts, two opposite answers

In May 2025, a judge in the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia sided with the state. The court held that vanity plates are government speech and therefore outside First Amendment protection, relying on the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which allowed Texas to refuse a specialty plate design bearing a Confederate flag.

On July 31, 2026, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously vacated that ruling. Judge Pamela Harris wrote that Virginia's approval authority over personalized plates "is more consistent with the regulation of private expression in a public forum than it is with the government speaking on its own behalf." The ACLU of Virginia says no federal appeals court had ruled on the question before, even though most district and state courts to consider it had treated the specific character combination on a vanity plate as private speech — the distinction being that a specialty plate's design is the state's product, while a personalized message is the driver's own words on the state's metal.

"Today the Court of Appeals reaffirmed what courts across the country have already found: that messages conveyed on vanity license plates constitute private speech protected by the First Amendment," ACLU-VA Legal Director Eden Heilman said when the ruling was issued. "Today's ruling is especially significant in Virginia, where drivers use personalized license plates at a higher rate than in any other state."

Source: ACLU of Virginia

Why Virginia is going to the Supreme Court anyway

The Fourth Circuit did not order the DMV to hand the plate back and end the case; it vacated the dismissal and sent the case back to district court, where Whateley's claims would be judged under the First Amendment. That left the state two roads: fight on in the lower court on other grounds, or ask the Supreme Court to settle the government-speech question nationally. Pickett's confirmation shows Jones has chosen the second road. Reason magazine, which has followed the case since August, notes the state has argued from the start that it may revoke the plate because license plates are government-owned property, not a public soapbox.

The stakes reach well beyond one Lynchburg sedan. Every state runs a personalized plate program and polices its messages — for profanity, for slurs, for political content — and those decisions are challenged regularly. If the justices take the case and side with Virginia, states would gain broad power to reject or recall messages they dislike. If the justices side with Whateley, or simply decline to hear the case and leave the Fourth Circuit's ruling standing, drivers' chosen messages in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas — the states covered by the Fourth Circuit — carry First Amendment protection that censors must overcome. For the Punjabi diaspora's many truckers and commuters, whose vehicles are both workplace and public identity, it is a reminder that even the smallest government-issued rectangle on a bumper can become a constitutional question.

What happens next

Virginia files its petition on Thursday, October 29. Whateley's side will have the opportunity to respond, and the justices will then decide at a private conference whether to grant review — a step that takes the votes of four justices and that most petitions do not survive. If the court declines, the Fourth Circuit's private-speech ruling stands and the case returns to the district court in Virginia for the next stage of Whateley's lawsuit. If the court grants review, briefing and argument would follow, with a decision likely to set the national rule for vanity plates. Potomac Local reported that Pickett did not answer questions about how many staff hours or public resources the attorney general's office has spent on the case.