Back in 2010, Leah Gilliam, a Tennessee native, ordered a customized license plate for her then-new car. Being a fan of competitive video games, she submitted a request for her plates to read “69PWNDU.” “Pwnd,” in case you weren’t into competitive online gaming in the early 2000s, is another way to say “owned.”

So, if a gamer “pwnd you,” they beat you. It was meant as a lighthearted way to tease those you beat in a game. Gilliam’s plate reflected that statement, and the Volunteer State approved it.

Flash forward to 2020, Gilliam gets a letter in the mail from the state saying that a decade later, the state found her license plate “offensive.” She had two options: surrender the license plate or pay a fine.

The pwnr wasn’t looking to get pwned, so she took the state to court—arguing the letter was infringing on her right to freedom of speech.

Gilliam lawyered up to protect her free speech

She hired Daniel A. Horwitz, who agreed the state was encroaching on her rights.

“Ms. Gilliam’s harmless vanity plate is transparently protected by the First Amendment, and the only illegality involved is the Tennessee Department of Revenue’s decision to violate her First Amendment rights,” he argued.

A state representative argued that the agency could withdraw their approval if a plate “carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency, or that are misleading,” and that, “Tenn. Code. Ann. § 55-5-117 authorizes the revocation of a motor vehicle registration plate that was erroneously issued contrary to law.”

Nearly five years later, the case reached the Supreme Court, which backed the state’s decision.

The Supreme Court essentially said, “Too bad”

In a round about way, the judge ruled that since plates are issued by government agencies, plates are “government speech” and not “free” speech. Therefore, Gilliam wasn’t protected by the First Amendment.

“In reaching this decision, the Court relied heavily on the United States Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. in which the Court determined that Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech,” read the judge’s decision.

“Although personalized alphanumeric combinations differ from specialty plate designs in some respects, the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded that a faithful application of Walker’s reasoning compels the conclusion that alphanumeric codes are government speech too.”

One of Gilliam’s lawyers, David Hudson, said the ruling carries some scary implications for other Tennessee motorists.

“Anyone who looks at a vanity plate recognizes that it is a personal statement by the owner of the vehicle. It is not the speech of the government,” he said during a The Tennessean interview. “The government speech doctrine has a dangerous capacity to swallow up entire swaths of personal expression. It’s a very dangerous doctrine.”