Regardless of what they were trying to accomplish, they did it wrong. The reason that H exists is to help exhaust system scavenging. Since you're in Commiefornia, you could potentially fail emissions testing based solely on the visual inspection (they like everything lais out just as illustraded in their book). This doesn't mean they WILL fail you for it but it does mean that they CAN fail you for it.
All is not lost. You can have a cross-pipe welded back in at a muffler shop for (I'm going to guess) $30 or so dollars.