Pen. Code, § 396.5 · Title 10. OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY
Pen. Code, § 396.5
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
It shall be unlawful for any retail food store or wholesale food concern, as defined in Section 3(k) of the federal Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (Public Law 95-113) (7 U.S.C. Sec. 2012(k)), or any person, to sell, furnish or give away any goods or services, other than those items authorized by the Food Stamp Act of 1964, as amended (Public Law 88-525) (Chapter 51 (commencing with Section 2011) of Title 7 of the United States Code), in exchange for CalFresh benefits issued pursuant to Chapter 10 (commencing with Section 18900), Part 6, Division 9 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.
Any violator of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars ($5,000) or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding 90 days, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2011, Ch. 227, Sec. 15. (AB 1400) Effective January 1, 2012.
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§ionNum=396.5.
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- 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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