Pen. Code, § 652 · Chapter 2. Of Other and Miscellaneous Offenses
Pen. Code, § 652
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) It shall be an infraction for any person to perform or offer to perform body piercing upon a person under the age of 18 years, unless the body piercing is performed in the presence of, or as directed by a notarized writing by, the person’s parent or guardian.
(b) This section does not apply to the body piercing of an emancipated minor.
(c) As used in this section, “body piercing” means the creation of an opening in the body of a human being for the purpose of inserting jewelry or other decoration, including, but not limited to, the piercing of a lip, tongue, nose, or eyebrow. “Body piercing” does not include the piercing of an ear.
(d) Neither the minor upon whom the body piercing was performed, nor the parent or guardian of that minor, nor any other minor is liable for punishment under this section.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2006, Ch. 538, Sec. 502. Effective January 1, 2007.
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=652.
- Text hash
- sha256 2d92d04c74d928126fd1864f8deb79e098feaf318abb713304bc935be851bf1d
- 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
Cited by 1 provision
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