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Cal. PEN § 273.86

This is the official text of Cal. PEN § 273.86, part of California’s Penal Code — defines crimes and sets criminal procedure in California.

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Official statutory text

The characterization of a defendant as a “spousal abuser” as defined by this chapter shall not be communicated to the trier of fact.

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.