Elon Musk said Tuesday he will move the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas in response to a new gender identity law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Musk’s announcement, made via a post on X, follows his 2021 decision to move electric car company Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, in the wake of coronavirus lockdowns in the Bay Area the year before. Now, two of Musk’s other major holdings are making symbolic moves out of California: SpaceX to the company’s Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas, and X to Austin.
The new gender identity law, signed into law by Gov. Newsom, a Democrat, on Monday, prohibits California school districts from requiring teachers to disclose a student’s change in gender identification or sexual orientation to their parents without the child’s consent. Musk wrote on X that the law was the “final straw” that prompted the move to Texas, where the billionaire and his companies could benefit from lower taxes and more relaxed regulations.
Earlier this year, SpaceX moved its operations from Delaware to Texas after a Delaware judge invalidated his pay package at Tesla.
“Because of this law and the many others that came before it, which attacked families and businesses alike, SpaceX will be moving its headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on X on Tuesday.
The first law in the United States, in California, is a bone of contention in the battle between conservative school boards concerned about parents' rights and advocates for LGBTQ privacy rights.
“I made it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and businesses to leave California to protect their children,” wrote Musk, who on Saturday endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for this year’s presidential election.
Newsom's office said in a statement that the law “does not allow a student's name or gender identity to be changed on an official school record without parental consent” and “does not take away or undermine the rights of parents.”
What does this mean for SpaceX?
Musk’s comments about X didn’t include any details about the implications of his companies’ moves to Texas. Although Tesla moved its headquarters to Texas in 2021, the company still makes cars in California and announced a new engineering center in Palo Alto last year. The situation with SpaceX is likely to be similar.
Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he’s renamed it X, rewritten the network’s content moderation policies, and laid off most of the company’s staff, reducing its workforce to around 1,500 employees. With massive production capabilities, SpaceX currently has more than 13,000 employees, so a move for Musk’s space company would affect more people and potentially be more disruptive than a move at X.
SpaceX’s current headquarters in Hawthorne, California, serves as a manufacturing plant, engineering design center, and mission control for the company’s rockets and spacecraft. Moving those facilities wouldn’t be easy, but SpaceX might not have to.
