Dispute over Grabher licence plate heats up as N.S. man told to remove plate

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The 69-year-old man said he feels he’s being unfairly targeted.

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“I’ve been red-flagged,” he said from his Dartmouth home, noting the large number of vehicles in the province that have inactive out-of-province plates on the front.

Grabher received international attention after the Registry of Motor Vehicles revoked his personalized Nova Scotia plate bearing his last name, saying it was a “socially unacceptable slogan.”

“The issue for me is where does anybody, especially the government, get the right to discriminate against somebody’s name,” he said. “The only place I can think of where they do stunts like that is if you live in a communist country.”

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is representing Grabher, and says the revocation infringes on his constitutional rights.

The organization filed a notice of application with the provincial Supreme Court seeking to overturn the decision.

A hearing on the matter scheduled for Wednesday was postponed to June 6 after a lawyer representing the province requested more time to “gather the names of witnesses” and “confirm instructions with my client.”

Grabher called the legal dispute a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“It’s my last name,” he said. “We’ve had this licence plate in my family for 27 years.”

Grabher said his last name is a point of pride for his family and its Austrian-German heritage.

In the early 1800s, Grabher’s great-great-grandfather made the journey from Austria to the United States, part of a wave of settlers.

His grandfather then moved to Canada in 1890 and put down roots in Alberta.

Grabher said his father joined the army at the age of 17, during the Second World War, and was sent to Cape Breton, where his family settled.

He said revoking his personalized licence plate is foolish and offensive.

Grabher said he is now using an alphanumeric licence plate on the rear of his car, and has removed the old Alberta plate from the front as requested by police.

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press