Right??? It shouldn't matter if it's in use or not, if the plate's blocked it's illegal. A bike rack that's flipped up while not in use is suspicious but a rack carrying a bike but blocking the plate is acceptable (at least in this case)? I'm also confused as it seems like from this thread that most who have gotten this citation is from something more serious like speeding and being written down, or using the obscured plate stop as a reason to look for something else. This was simply just a stop for my rack blocking my plate and nothing else...Oh well, $54 and moving on.
I may be looking at a hitch riser adapter to lift the rack up a bit to improve the visibility of the plate while keeping the rack out of view in my back glass of my hatchback. The plate still won't be 100% visible, but currently the inner tray of my Kuat Sherpa rack is wide enough to block the plate when it's stored unused, but if it's up 3-4" then only the 1" or so wide part of the rack would be blocking the plate. Then again, I may not even worry about it and save the $$.