CNMI Veteran and Disabled Veteran License Plates

9 CMC § 2116 is a small benefit written with more care than most, and three of its rules are worth knowing before you apply. The discount. The fee for a veteran or disabled veteran license plate, for first registration and every renewal, is twenty-five percent less than the fee for a similar plate for the same class of vehicle. It is a standing discount, not a one-off. The free case. No fee at all is charged for the issuance of a veteran or disabled veteran plate to a veteran rated by VA at one hundred percent permanent and total disability. To get that waiver you furnish a copy of the decision letter from the Regional Veterans Affairs Office showing the approved rating to both the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Finance. The vehicle count. Subsection (e)(1) says registration for these plates "shall not be limited to one vehicle per veteran." Most jurisdictions in this catalog cap the exemption or discount at one vehicle. The Commonwealth does not. The plate must be for a non-commercial vehicle registered to the veteran, or to a legal guardian applying under the section. Eligibility is wider than the usual test, and it was widened again in 2026. Public Law 24-23 (House Bill 24-23), signed March 11, 2026 and effective on approval, rewrote subsections (a) and (b)(1). A veteran, for this section, is now a person who served on active duty or in a reserve component of any branch of the United States Armed Forces and was discharged or released under conditions other than dishonorable; the Act dropped the old list of named branches, so Space Force service plainly counts, and wrote the reserve components in expressly. There is no minimum length of service in the statute. A disabled veteran is the same person, certified as having at least ten percent disability due to a service-related injury, which is a low bar compared with the one hundred percent or unemployability tests that gate property tax relief in the neighbouring territories. Proof has a fallback. The primary document is the DD214. If you do not have one, a veteran may use a certification from the Military and Veterans Affairs Office based on documents you submit, or, since Public Law 24-23, a valid Veteran Identification Card issued by VA. A disabled veteran may use an office certification of at least ten percent service-related disability. That fallback matters in a place where discharge paperwork can take months to recover. The design carries information. Below the line "HAFA ADAI" the plate reads VETERAN or DISABLED VETERAN in black, bordered by the United States flag on the left and the CNMI flag on the right, and the plate number is in an alphanumeric format designating branch of service, so A001 is Army, NG045 is National Guard and R610 is Reserves. A qualified person with a disability gets the International Symbol of Accessibility in the same size as the lettering. One quiet provision for families. The plates are not transferable to another person, but the Commissioner of Public Safety or a designee shall allow the survivor of the qualified person, on request, to retain the front license plate as a memorial. Where the money goes: under 1 CMC § 20129(b) all fees collected for the registration and use of veteran plates under Public Law 14-16 are deposited into the CNMI Veterans Cemetery Revolving Fund, which pays for the upkeep of the cemetery grounds at Marpi.