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Pen. Code, § 13680 · Title 4.9. California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act.

Pen. Code, § 13680

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

For purposes of this title, the following terms have the following meanings:

(a) “Genocide” means any of the following acts committed with specific intent to destroy, in whole or substantially in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through means including killing or causing serious bodily injury to members of the group, causing permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar means, subjecting the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group, in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

(b) “Hate crime” has the same meaning as is Section 422.55.

(c) “Hate group” means an organization that supports, advocates for, threatens, or practices genocide or the commission of hate crimes.

(d) “Membership in a hate group” means being, or holding oneself out as, a member of a hate group with the intent to further the unlawful aims of the group.

(e) “Participation in any hate group activity” means active and direct involvement in, or coordination or facilitation of, any hate crime by hate group members.

(f) “Peace officer” means a person described within Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2, who is employed by an agency or department of the state, or any political subdivision thereof, that provides uniformed police services to members of the public including, without limitation, a municipal police department, a county sheriff’s department, the Department of the California Highway Patrol, the University of California, California State University, or any California Community College police department, and the police department of any school district, transit district, park district, or port authority. “Peace officer” also includes any state or local correctional or custodial officer, and any parole or probation officer.

(g) (1) “Public expression of hate” means any statement or expression to another person, including any statement or expression made in an online forum that is accessible to another person, that explicitly advocates for, explicitly supports, or explicitly threatens to commit genocide or any hate crime or that explicitly advocates for or explicitly supports any hate group.

(h) “Sustained” means a final determination by the investigating agency following an investigation, or, if adverse action is taken, a final determination by a commission, board, hearing officer, or arbitrator, as applicable, following an opportunity for an administrative appeal pursuant to Sections 3304 and 3304.5 of the Government Code, that the allegation is true.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2023, Ch. 131, Sec. 164. (AB 1754) Effective January 1, 2024.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=13680.
Text hash
sha256 32ec4db3f6b2455b70287c228c58294d11340de2d651e4c5ab424e4825bf64c4
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.