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You need to possess a certain set of sensibilities to be the kind of person who decides to go out of their way to attach a fake scrotum to the back of your vehicle. In most states, that move is mostly just considered a violation of good taste, but it’s now theoretically illegal in Idaho thanks to a new bill that targets the accessory commonly referred to as “truck nuts.”
There are plenty of people who use their car as a canvas to express themselves, and there are more than a few drivers who aren’t afraid to leap over the line of what most people would consider “common decency” with the help of profane bumper stickers and unsanctioned decals of the kid from Calvin and Hobbes peeing on things.
There’s also truck nuts, the fake scrotums that can theoretically be attached to the back of basically any vehicle but are inextricably linked with raised pickups that may or may not have an image of a scantily clad woman airbrushed on the tailgate.
Truck nuts actually have a pretty fascinating history. No one really knows who came up with the wildly juvenile concept that surfaced as early as the 1980s, but there was a pretty fierce war between a couple of guys who attempted to corner the market around the turn of the millennium.
In 2008, Florida attempted to make truck nuts illegal with a law that proposed a $60 fine for offenders that ultimately failed to pass, and in 2011, a woman in South Carolina mounted a legal battle after getting hit with a $445 ticket for violating the state’s obscenity statute.
That brings us to a new law that was recently signed by Idaho Governor Brad Little, which was primarily designed to outlaw exposed breasts in public but has made truck nuts collateral damage.
According to the Idaho Capital Sun, House Bill 270 recently went into effect while updating a preexisting indecent exposure law that now outlaws the public display of “female breasts, male breasts altered to look like female breasts, artificial breasts and toys or products that resemble genitals.”
That last clause means truck nuts are essentially outlawed in the state, as Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow (a Democrat representing Boise who is opposed to the bill on First Amendment grounds) says she spoke to law enforcement officers who confirmed drivers displaying them could land in hot water, saying:
“They’re gross, they’re offensive, and kids on the road see them. So why wouldn’t the police get a call and say, ‘That offends me, pull it off the truck?’
Because now this bill will allow it. And I talked to police and they said, ‘Indeed it would.’”
What a world.