Tennessee Lawmakers Want “In God We Trust” On License Plates
Tennessee lawmakers want to add the phrase “In God We Trust” to Tennessee license plates, but the state attorney general calls the bill “constitutionally suspect” in a legal opinion, according to The Tennesseean.
The bill, proposed by Representatives Bill Sanderson and Paul Bailey, would require all Tennessee license plates to carry the phrase. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III issued a legal opinion on the bill, saying it would violate the constitutions of the United States and Tennessee. He noted that giving drivers the option to get a plate with the phrase on it would be “constitutionally defensible.”
The change to the license plates would cost the state just under $20 million, according to a fiscal note on the bill.
Contact Shira Hanau at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO