The Reason Ohio Cars No Longer Need a Front License Plate

An Ohio state trooper runs a plate off the rear bumper now because Ohio cars only carry one plate anymore.

It wasn’t always that way.

Many Ohio cars still carry two empty screw holes up front, left over from a fight that played out at the Statehouse.

These are the reasons Ohio dropped the front plate, from the money behind it to the officers who spent years trying to bring it back.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Ohio’s license plate rules are subject to change, so confirm the current requirements with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Ohio’s Front License Plate Disappeared in 2020

Ohio’s front license plate stopped being a legal requirement on July 1, 2020.

That date sat buried in House Bill 62, the two-year transportation budget Gov. Mike DeWine signed the year before.

Lawmakers tucked the change into a bill mostly about roads and gas taxes.

It took effect without a single press conference.

Before that date, Ohio drivers bolted a plate to both bumpers.

The front went bare.

Ohio’s motor vehicle code still carves out one exception for commercial tractors, which keep a plate up front while everyday cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) don’t have to.

Cost Savings Started the Push

Ohio lawmakers reached for the front license plate first because of a price tag.

Manufacturing and mailing a second plate for every registered vehicle ran the state about $1.4 million a year.

That’s the figure Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission landed on when it costed out House Bill 62.

The same estimate found a downside, too.

Local governments stood to lose up to $240,000 a year in fines and court costs once officers had one less reason to pull a driver over.

Lawmakers weighed a guaranteed $1.4 million in savings against a smaller, harder-to-predict loss in ticket revenue.

The repeal stayed in.

Cincinnati Lawmakers Pushed Equity, Too

Ohio lawmakers from Cincinnati argued a different case entirely.

Former state Rep. Alicia Reece and Cincinnati state Rep. Sedrick Denson pointed to how officers enforced the requirement, not just what it cost.

Front plates rarely came standard on newer, pricier cars, they argued.

That meant officers stopped older or cheaper vehicles far more often.

One case anchored their argument.

A University of Cincinnati police officer stopped Sam DuBose, an unarmed Black driver, over a missing front license plate in 2015, and the stop ended with DuBose’s death.

That case had already reshaped how Ohio lawmakers talked about routine traffic stops, years before the repeal reached a vote.

By 2020, the argument carried new weight.

Nationwide protests over policing that summer pushed Denson and other lawmakers to call the missing-plate stop exactly what they saw it as: One more reason for an officer to pull someone over.

Law Enforcement Fought to Keep Two Plates

Ohio law enforcement groups spent years trying to stop this fight before it started.

Every earlier attempt to drop the front plate died in committee.

Police objections killed it every time, on the argument that the plate helped identify vehicles in a hit-and-run, an Amber Alert, or a trafficking case.

When House Bill 62 finally passed anyway, two Republican state senators tried to undo it.

Sen. Jay Hottinger introduced Senate Bill 179 months later, standing in front of a dozen uniformed officers at a press conference.

“In reality, it is an incredible crime-fighting tool,” Hottinger said of the plate.

Ridesharing companies backed him up.

Uber and Lyft both asked Ohio to keep the front plate, since their apps ask riders to match a car’s plate number before climbing in.

The bill never reached a Senate floor vote.

It stalled out in committee instead.

What Ohio Requires Today

Ohio’s rule hasn’t moved since that fight ended.

Ohio Revised Code 4503.21 requires just one plate today, mounted on the rear of the vehicle, for every car, truck, and SUV registered in the state.

Commercial tractors remain the outlier, still required to carry a plate up front.

Everyone else mounts one plate.

Drivers who want a front plate anyway can still bolt one on.

The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles says that plate has to match the rear plate exactly, not a novelty plate or an out-of-state souvenir.

Ohio Isn’t Alone Without a Front Plate

Ohio joined a cluster of nearby states when the front license plate disappeared in 2020.

Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky don’t require one either, so a driver can cross any of Ohio’s land borders without spotting a second plate.

That wasn’t always true.

Some of those states dropped the requirement decades before Ohio caught up, long before the cost or the equity argument ever reached the Ohio Statehouse.

Public radio’s Statehouse News Bureau counted well over a dozen states in that same no-front-plate column the day Ohio joined it.

2021 Redesign Had Its Own Slip-Up

Ohio’s plate got a second, unrelated shake-up the year after the front-plate rule changed.

Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled a new standard design nicknamed Sunrise in Ohio in October 2021, replacing the plate Ohio had used since 2013.

The design put a Wright Brothers plane front and center, pulling a banner that reads “Birthplace of Aviation.”

There was just one problem.

The artist drew the old flyer facing the wrong direction, so the first version showed the banner being pushed instead of pulled.