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(RALEIGH, N.C.) The North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (NCDMV) said Monday it will no longer issue or renew specialty license plates with the Confederate battle flag, according to The New York Times.
The NCDMV said in a statement, "Effective January 1, 2021, the Division of Motor Vehicles will no longer issue or renew specialty license plates bearing the Confederate battle flag or any variation of that flag," according to Wilmington StarNews.
The agency added, "The Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has determined that license plates bearing the Confederate battle flag have the potential to offend those who view them. We have therefore concluded that display of the Confederate battle flag is inappropriate for display on specialty license plates, which remain property of the state."
The plates use a design incorporating the battle flag for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), an organization of descendants of Confederate veterans founded in 1896.
Larry McCluney Jr., the head of the organization, disagreed with the discontinuation.
"What we see here is just an attack on American history," McCluney told The Times. "We live in an era where all it takes is for one or a couple of people to say, ‘I’m offended by it,’ yet the majority has to kowtow to it."
He argued that the Confederate battle flag doesn't stand for slavery and suggested it spoke to Southern identity, noting that he has a similar license plate in Mississippi and is "horrified" by slavery.
"That was the soldiers’ flag," he said. "If you don’t like it, go the other way. You don’t have to look."
The North Carolina chapter of the SCV issued its own statement Tuesday condemning the state's decision as "discrimination."
According to CNN, the statement said, "The NC-DMV has claimed that our civic group's legally registered logo may be offensive and is inappropriate for display. Make no mistake about this... We are a hereditary civic organization that takes great pride in our ancestry, our deep roots, our ethnic heritage, and our ancestor's sacrifices to the Southern States including North Carolina."
It continued, "This blatant discrimination by our government is being driven from ignorance of our State's true history by some and a deep hatred for native Southerners by others. We fear it is more of the latter, being driven by racist organizations and intolerant politicians that would rather condone violence and destruction against anyone or anything that doesn't conform to their way of thinking."
The NCDMV defended the change and said it was consistent with a court ruling mandating that the SCV receive specialty plates while arguing that the SCV could not dictate the designs the government used on the plates. The state plans to continue to issue specialty plates to the SCV, just without Confederate battle flag designs.
Frank Powell, a spokesperson for the North Carolina chapter of the SCV, said Monday the organization would see the state in court.
He said, "Our plates were issued under a court order and it was upheld by the N.C. Court of Appeals," adding "I don't care who is the commissioner of the Department of Transportation is, they cannot violate the ruling."
According to StarNews, the state said last summer it had more than 2,500 active license plates that bore the SCV's Confederate flag emblem. After retracting an updated larger figure on Monday, an NCDMV spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that there were 2,527 of the specialty plates on the road.