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Statutes » California » Vehicle Code » Division 3

Cal. VEH § 4851

This is the official text of Cal. VEH § 4851, part of California’s Vehicle Code — governs traffic laws, driver's licenses, and vehicle registration.

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Official statutory text

Every license plate shall have displayed upon it the registration number assigned to the vehicle for which it is issued, together with the word “California” or the abbreviation “Cal.” and the year number for which it is issued or a suitable device issued by the department for validation purposes, which device shall contain the year number for which issued.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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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.