North Dakota Veteran License Plates and Driver’s License Indicator

The North Dakota veterans' number plate under 39-04-10.10 is issued to "individuals eligible for interment in the North Dakota veterans' cemetery". That is an unusual gate and it is worth understanding, because it means the plate follows 37-03-14 rather than the general definition of veteran in 37-01-40. Guard and other reserve component members are named in the cemetery section in their own right, so they reach the plate without a qualifying period of federal active duty. The fees fund the cemetery. A fifteen dollar initial fee, of which ten goes to the highway tax distribution fund and five to the veterans' cemetery maintenance fund, plus an annual surcharge of ten dollars paid to the adjutant general which is split five dollars to the veterans' cemetery trust fund and five to the maintenance fund. Both the initial fee and the annual surcharge are waived entirely for a plate issued to a veteran who has been awarded the Purple Heart. All of this is in addition to ordinary registration fees. The disabled veteran route is different and is covered in its own entry: a veteran at one hundred percent, paid at the one hundred percent rate, or qualifying under the federal automobile grant provision pays no registration fee on two vehicles, no motor vehicle excise tax, and may choose a plate that does not identify them as disabled. Prisoner of war plates carry a provision that other states do not. Under 39-04-10.5, on the death of a prisoner of war who held the plate, the director transfers it to the surviving spouse, who may keep it as an active plate. If that spouse remarries they must surrender it within thirty days. On surrender, or on the spouse's death, or where there was no surviving spouse, the director retires the number, and at the request of the survivors issues them one commemorative plaque resembling the plate. The number is not reissued to anyone else. Gold star plates under 39-04-10.14 go to family members of a service member who died while serving on active duty during a time of military conflict, and once eligibility is declared the Department may not remove it. Military sacrifice plates under 39-04-10.17 cover the immediate family of someone who died outside a combat zone while serving honorably. Both are described in the funeral honors entry. The driver's licence indicator is in 39-06-14(6): upon request and with adequate documentation, the director shall place an indicator on the face of a veteran's operator's licence, and "the veteran may make the request through the department of veterans' affairs". In practice the veteran takes a DD-214 to a county veterans service officer, who issues the verification form, and the veteran takes that to a driver's licence site. Eligibility follows the 180-day or full-called-period test with a discharge under other than dishonorable conditions. There is no statutory right to a retail discount attached to the indicator in North Dakota. A business offering one does so voluntarily.