Nebraska Plate Covers: No Blurring Matter, No Altered Appearance

The Nebraska rule works on effect rather than on product names. Subsection (3) of § 60-399 states that all letters, numbers, printing, writing and other identification marks upon the plate and certificate "shall be kept clear and distinct and free from grease, dust, or other blurring matter, so that they shall be plainly visible at all times during daylight and under artificial light in the nighttime." The night half of that sentence is what defeats most aftermarket covers: a smoked or one-way film may leave the characters readable in sunshine and still kill them under a patrol car's spotlight or a camera flash, and the statute demands both.

Subsection (4) closes the remaining gap. Since the section was amended by Laws 2025, LB97, § 19, approved by the Governor on April 14, 2025 with an emergency clause, the text reads: "Addition, removal, or modification of design, color, or appearance of any such license plate is prohibited while it is displayed on the vehicle to which it is assigned." That is a bare-conduct rule with no visibility test attached. A tinted shield, a spray coating, a blackout film, a plate flipper or anything else that changes how the plate looks is prohibited by its own terms even if the numbers remain legible, so a driver cannot argue readability out of it. It also catches the reverse move of removing part of the plate's design, for example scraping off a county designation or a validation area.

Mounting is governed in the same section and is a common second charge. Subsection (2) requires that plates "be securely fastened in an upright position to the motor vehicle or trailer so as to prevent such plates from swinging and at a minimum distance of twelve inches from the ground to the bottom of the license plate." It then bars displaying a plate or registration certificate other than the one assigned for the current period, a fictitious or altered plate or certificate, a plate or certificate cancelled by the department, or plates lacking current validation decals. A frame that hangs a plate on a chain, a plate propped in a rear window and a plate mounted low behind a bumper each run into a different clause of that subsection. Nebraska courts have read the display requirement literally: the official annotations to § 60-399 record that a plate hanging downward is not fastened in an upright position (State v. Hyland, 17 Neb. App. 539), that displaying a front plate inside the windshield so an officer could not ascertain the numbers was a traffic violation supporting the stop (State v. Richardson, 17 Neb. App. 388), and that display of a plate logically implies a display that is visible (State v. Reiter, 3 Neb. App. 153). Note that the Hyland annotation still cites the upright-position language to subsection (1) while the text in force now carries it in subsection (2), a numbering artefact left by the 2025 amendment.

How many plates have to stay clear is itself changing on a fixed date. Section 60-3,100(2) applies on and before December 31, 2028 and requires two plates for every motor vehicle, one displayed prominently on the front and one on the rear, with one-plate treatment for buses, minitrucks, motorcycles other than autocycles, trailers, truck-tractors, dealers and apportionable vehicles. Subsection (2)(d) also lets the owner of a passenger car not manufactured with a front plate bracket request a single plate and a windshield decal for the driver's side on payment of an extra fifty dollar annual nonrefundable registration fee. Section 60-3,100(3) then applies on and after January 1, 2029 and moves Nebraska to one plate for every registered motor vehicle or trailer, displayed on the rear. Until that date a cover on the front plate is as much an offense as a cover on the rear one; from 2029 the exposure narrows to a single plate.

One thing Nebraska does not do is set a light-transmission figure for plate covers the way it does for window glazing in § 60-6,257. There is no percentage to argue about and no measuring device involved. The question an officer answers at the roadside is whether the characters are plainly visible in daylight and under artificial light, and whether anything has been added to the plate at all.

Section 60-399 belongs to the Motor Vehicle Registration Act, which § 60-301 defines as sections 60-301 to 60-3,236. That placement matters: the traffic-infraction default in § 60-682 covers the Nebraska Rules of the Road and does not reach this section. Instead § 60-3,170 provides that anyone who violates any provision of the Motor Vehicle Registration Act for which a penalty is not otherwise provided is guilty of a Class III misdemeanor, and § 28-106 sets that class at a maximum of three months imprisonment, a five hundred dollar fine, or both, with no minimum.

A covered or altered plate in Nebraska is therefore a criminal charge rather than the hundred dollar infraction that a lane or tire violation draws. In practice the more consequential effect is evidentiary: under the Richardson and Reiter annotations an unreadable plate gives an officer probable cause for the stop itself, which is how most plate-cover cases begin. A uniformed officer may also use § 60-683(4) to require the driver to present the vehicle within five days so that the defect can be shown corrected.