While California legislators continue in their attempt to criminalize the home education of your child, they also want to equate spanking your child with child abuse. From the Home School Legal Defense Foundation:

Assembly Member Sally Lieber has reintroduced her “anti-spanking” bill with a new number—A.B. 2943. Last year she attempted to push her bill, A.B. 755, through the legislature, and it was officially stopped on January 31, 2008, when it failed to be passed out of the Assembly. Identical to her failed A.B. 755, A.B. 2943 would have the practical effect of making a non-injurious spanking with an object such as a ruler, folded newspaper, small paddle, etc. illegal. After being arrested, charged, and tried in a criminal court, parents could receive up to one year in jail and lose custody of their children. When Lieber claims that her bill only deals with child abuse, remember that she has stated repeatedly that all spanking, by definition, is child abuse. Her strategy in A.B. 2943 is to treat all spanking with an object as criminal child abuse. She has deliberately failed to make any distinction between spanking as a method of discipline and true child abuse.

It's interesting to note that while governments are consistently promoting crazed decrees that would criminalize home discipline measures such as spanking, they continue to load up the prison cells for smaller crimes, white-collar crimes, and non-crimes.