As of Oct. 1, anything that obstructs your license plate is illegal in Florida with harsher punishments, starting with up to a $500 fine, up to 60 days in jail, or both.
Does that mean you have to ditch your cool license plate frame?
Many people like to personalize their vehicles with frames on top of their license plates that promote causes, favorite TV, movie and music stars, places they’ve visited, funny sayings and more. Many car dealers send purchases off the lot with personalized frames they hope buyers leave on for a while.
Will your Lord of the Rings frame get you pulled over? What about a Florida one with the palm trees sticking up?
Here’s what to know about the new law.
Rejected Florida license plates
Florida has released a list of the custom license plates they rejected in 2024, and some a quite risque.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
Is it illegal in Florida to have a license plate frame?
No. Not unless it actually covers any portion of the license plate numbers and letters or the yellow registration decal.
The law was intended to stop tinted covers that could make plates hard to read under certain conditions. It also takes aim at devices that are specifically intended to obscure identification by law enforcement by flipping, blurring or hiding the plate. Some online dealers even advertise sprays to overexpose images taken by red light and speed cameras.
“Starting October 1, 2025, Florida Statute 320.061 introduces new penalties for anyone who alters, obscures, sells, or uses devices to cover their license plate,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said in an X post after the law went into effect.
“What used to be a traffic ticket can now land you with criminal charges, up to a second-degree misdemeanor. And if you’re using one of these plates to commit another crime, the penalties get even worse.”
The law bans anything that covers, obscures, or otherwise interferes “with the legibility, angular visibility, or detectability of the primary features or details, including the license plate number or validation sticker, on the license plate.” As long as your frame doesn’t block those details, you should be fine.
Critics of the new law worried that it would be used as another excuse to pull over people of color or potential immigrants.
Florida Sheriffs reassure drivers over license plate frames
On Monday, Dec. 9, the Florida Sheriffs Association posted some clarification to Facebook over its own license plate frame.
“We want to reassure you that the official FSA license plate frame DOES NOT violate Florida Statute 320.061,” the FSA said in a Facebook post. “You may continue to use your FSA license plate frame with confidence.”
What is Florida’s law on license plate covers?
HB 253: Offenses Involving Motor Vehicles bumped up penalties for obscuring identification of a vehicle.
- Buying or possessing a “license plate obscuring device:” Second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine, up to 60 days in jail, or both.
- Use one while committing or fleeing a crime: Third-degree felony with fines up to $5,000 and/or up to 5 years in jail
- Manufacturing, selling, offering to sell or otherwise distributing such devices: First-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail or up to a $1,000 fine, or both
- Knowingly altering a vehicle registration certificate, license plate or specified sticker, or knowingly covering or interfering with the legibility of a license plate: Also a second-degree misdemeanor.
How do license plate covers work? How do they hide numbers?
License plate covers are made of clear polycarbonate with a thin layer of prismatic material over where the letters and numbers go, according to radartest.com. The plate is visible when viewed from directly behind, but the more you move to the side or above (such as the angle that, say, a red light or speed camera might be using), more of the characters may be obscured. RadarTest’s tests didn’t find them particularly effective.
However, some are tinted so that even from behind the vehicle, glare from the Florida sun may make the plate illegible.
At least two companies market spray coatings they claim cause law enforcement cameras to overexpose their pictures, thwarting attempts to identify the vehicle.
“We find that it takes more than a can of clear spray paint to neutralize a $50,000 computer-controlled camera system,” RadarTest said.
