The billionaire is leveraging his companies in response to a law meant to protect children from being outed to their parents unwillingly.
Tech mogul Elon Musk, 53, announced Tuesday afternoon in a pair of posts on his social media platform that SpaceX would be moving its headquarters from Hawthorne to Starbase, Texas, while X would relocate its headquarters from San Francisco to the tech hub of Austin.
And 𝕏 HQ will move to Austin https://t.co/LUDfLEsztj
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 16, 2024
Musk said that the SAFETY Act, a law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom that will prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to inform parents if a child wants to be identified by a different gender, was “the final straw.”
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” Musk wrote in another post on X.
In 2022, one of Musk’s children petitioned a California court to recognize her new name and gender, stating that she no longer wished to be related to her famous and wealthy father “in any way, shape or form.” Musk told the Financial Times that his daughter’s decision was caused by “neo-Marxists” at educational institutions. On X, he had been heavily criticized for his positions on gender identity issues.
He continued in a separate post that he has also “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” apparently referring to issues in the neighborhood surrounding the X headquarters in the city’s Mid-Market Street area.
California State Senator Scott Wiener responded to the news by re-Xing one of Musk’s posts, writing, “California literally made you with taxpayer subsidies and is the best place around. Will this be a fake temper tantrum move just like Tesla’s fake ‘move’ to Texas?”
I’ve long supported keeping tech here & I take plenty of heat for that.
But a company HQing here doesn’t mean its CEO gets to decide if LGBTQ Californians have civil rights.
If protecting LGBTQ kids’ safety is too much for Elon, that says way more about him than about SF & CA. pic.twitter.com/seEnQUsYVT
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) July 17, 2024
Musk has had an inclination toward the Lone Star State for a few years now. In 2021, Musk said he would move Tesla HQ from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas. In February, SpaceX filed to move its business incorporation location from Delaware to Texas, after a Delaware state judge struck down Musk’s 2018 Tesla pay package, siding with a shareholder who had challenged it as excessive.
Musk also said in December 2020 that he had moved to Texas. However, his company has established a foundation in the state, though it has been somewhat unsteady. Many jobs depend on him, and he continues to rely on the Californian market.