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Cal. PEN § 157

This is the official text of Cal. PEN § 157, part of California’s Penal Code — defines crimes and sets criminal procedure in California.

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Official statutory text

Every person to whom an infant has been confided for nursing, education, or any other purpose, who, with intent to deceive any parent or guardian of that child, substitutes or produces to that parent or guardian another child in the place of the one so confided, is punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three or four years.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.