A grandfather from Long Island, New York expressed his dissatisfaction after his personalized license plate was revoked by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) due to a “homophonic joke”, believing that the authorities are overly scrutinizing and restricting freedom of speech. He recently directly addressed Governor Hochul, hoping to have his license plate reinstated.
69-year-old Seth Bykofsky, a resident of West Hempstead, expressed that his personalized license plate “PB4WEGO” had been in use for over five years. However, in January of this year, he received a letter from the DMV notifying him that after a “rigorous review”, the license plate no longer met the requirements and had to be revoked.
“PB4WEGO” is actually an abbreviation for “Pee Before We Go”, a homophonic joke often said by many parents and grandparents before taking children out.
Bykofsky stated that he had driven with this license plate on his car through at least 15 states, whether they were conservative “red states” or liberal “blue states”, and everyone who saw it would smile. Once, a police officer even stopped by him at a red light to tell him that the license plate made him burst into laughter.
He emphasized that no one has ever told him that the license plate was inappropriate. Everyone found it clever, fun, and witty, far from being offensive.
This phrase comes from Bykofsky’s years of firsthand experience. With two children and four grandchildren, the children always started asking for a bathroom stop shortly after the car ride began. Therefore, countless times in his life, he yelled at the children to “go to the bathroom before leaving!”
Bykofsky pointed out that he had actually been applying for this license plate for many years, but it had always shown as “unavailable” until a few years ago when it was finally approved, and the whole family thought it was “cute and apt”.
Now, after it has been revoked, he has to switch back to a randomly assigned regular license plate. He believes that the DMV’s action constitutes “overextension of administrative power” and may even infringe on freedom of speech. “Today it’s a license plate, what will it be next time?”
Bykofsky stated that he is directly petitioning Governor Hochul, hoping for the state government to intervene. He also mentioned a woman in New Hampshire in 2019 who had a similar content license plate revoked, but she appealed to then-Governor Chris Sununu, who personally ordered her to keep the license plate.
The state motto of New Hampshire is “Live Free or Die”.
Despite this, Bykofsky has prepared for the worst-case scenario. If the state government ultimately does not allow the reinstatement of the license plate, he plans to frame it and hang it on the wall of his own bathroom.
Currently, the DMV has not publicly explained the specific reasons for the violation of the license plate.