The previous plates forced atheists to acknowledge God unless they paid for an alternative

(Follow link to view photos)

Has Mississippi given up on adding “In God We Trust” to its license plates? And did atheists have anything to do with it?

Officials there won’t admit it, but the outcome certainly suggests it’s possible.

This all began back in May of 2019, when then-Governor Phil Bryant introduced the state’s new “default” license plate — the one that would automatically be given to anybody who needed one. It included the state seal emblazoned with the phrase “In God We Trust.”

It wasn’t just that the seal had “In God We Trust” written front and center, now that seal was going to be stamped on new license plates.

That meant if you wanted to avoid promoting God by getting a different background on your license plate, it would cost you. In other words, getting a secular license plate was effectively a tax on non-Christian residents. You would think the state would make an alternative option available at no charge… but nope. This one, with the religious propaganda masquerading as the National Motto, was going to be the only cost-free choice.

Even worse: If you owned an RV, motorcycle, or trailer, you had to use the religious plates. If you purchased vanity plates (with your own chosen letters and/or numbers), the background had to be the “In God We Trust” design. Even some drivers who needed to display a “disabled” tag would have been forced to use the religious design.

That’s why, in June of 2021, American Atheists, the Mississippi Humanist Association, and three residents sued the Mississippi Commissioner of Revenue Chris Graham. Their lawsuit even use the same (successful) argument offered by Catholic Social Services in the Fulton case decided by the Supreme Court, saying that they should not be subject to follow the state’s rules if those rules violated their sincerely held beliefs.

The lawsuit made clear that the atheists were not suing over the religious nature of the motto itself or the legality of the State Seal. (Both of those would have been dead-on-arrival arguments given the way federal courts have ruled in the past.) This was only about how Mississippi was forcing “nonreligious drivers to display the government’s preferred ideological, religious message on their vehicles or, if they refuse to do so, pay higher fees to legally drive their vehicles.”

“Every minute they spend on the streets of Mississippi, atheists are forced to act as a billboard for the state’s religious message,” said Geoffrey T. Blackwell, litigation counsel at American Atheists. “Some can avoid being a mouthpiece for the government by paying a penalty. For many others, even that isn’t possible. Atheists with a disability or a special category of vehicle are stuck proclaiming a belief in the Christian god. It’s an abuse of power and unconstitutional.”

“Wherever I use my trailer, I am forced to profess a religious idea that I do not believe,” said plaintiff Jason Alan Griggs. “Imagine a Christian having to drive around with ‘In No God We Trust’ or ‘In Allah We Trust.’”

“As a Mississippi resident with a permanent disability, I have no other option but to put ‘In God We Trust’ on my property. It’s most certainly not what I believe, but in Mississippi there is just no alternative,” said Sue Moss, a member of the Mississippi Humanist Association.

“For years, I had a personalized license plate message on the old blues guitar design. In 2019, when ‘In God We Trust’ became the new standard plate, I was forced to either give up my chosen message or display it alongside the Mississippi government’s religious statement. I shouldn’t have to make that choice. The government shouldn’t be able to decree that I display a message that goes against my beliefs,” said Sarah Worrel, American Atheists’ Mississippi Assistant State Director for Gulfport.

…

Two recent Supreme Court cases, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia and Tandon v. Newsom, bolster American Atheists’ claims. The Court ruled that where a law or policy includes a system of exemptions, a similar exemption must be provided for anyone with religious objections. Since Mississippi provides alternative plate designs to certain categories of individuals, atheists and other Mississippians who object to “In God We Trust” must receive equal treatment.

The lawsuit said the forced plates violated their First Amendment Free Speech and Free Exercise rights, and the atheists were asking the courts to stop the state from “charging additional or increased fees to Mississippi car owners who do not wish to endorse the state’s ideological message.”

It was a novel approach to a serious problem. Just because “In God We Trust” has been the nation’s motto for decades didn’t mean it was okay for politicians to slap the phrase everywhere they found space. Just because it’s the motto didn’t mean it wasn’t religious. Tradition didn’t make something right, and this religious motto was always a bad tradition.

The irony of this whole situation was that the state had an easy out: All they had to do was offer a God-free license plate to anyone who wanted it. Until 2019, the license plates bore the image of a guitar, a symbol representing Mississippi-born blues legend B.B. King. There was nothing wrong with that.

This past March, a federal judge agreed that the atheists “have articulated a violation of their First Amendment free speech rights. They cannot be compelled to display ‘In God We Trust’ on their license plate.” The question was what the proper remedy should be. Could they just cover up the phrase on their license plates? Yes, said the judge, and there was precedent for doing it… but unless the atheists were “prosecuted for non-compliance” for doing just that, there wasn’t much he could do since they hadn’t suffered any legal injury.

The case was dismissed. In early April, the atheists announced their plan to appeal the decision.

But here’s the stunning development in the story: All of this may now be moot.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves named the winner of a license plate design contest that was first announced last November. These new default license plates would go into circulation beginning in January of 2024. After sifting through 400 submissions, the winning entry, created by Leah Frances Eaton, was this one: