Elon Musk says he’ll move X & SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas. Here’s why

Billionaire Elon Musk said Tuesday he would move the headquarters for his social media and rocket ship companies out of California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning public school districts from notifying parents if a child asks for different gender identification than what appears on their birth certificate.

Musk called this the “final straw” on his social media platform X.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote.

“And X HQ will move to Austin” Texas, he wrote in a follow-up post.

“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 added.

But the relocation of his rocket ship company SpaceX has apparently been in the works for years.

According to SpaceX, Starbase is “one of the world’s first commercial spaceports designed for orbital missions. Located in Cameron County, Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico, Starbase is one of four active launch sites in the United States operated by SpaceX.”

The company has been expanding operations at the Gulf site for some time. Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired dozens of acres in a land swap with the state of Texas.

Musk said he personally moved to Texas a few years ago.

The parental notification bill that Newsom signed Monday, Assembly Bill 1955, prevents school personnel from requiring parental disclosure of a child requesting to be addressed by a different name or pronouns or to access a bathroom or school activities for a sex other than what appears on their birth certificates.

The bill was written in response to a number of conservative-led California school boards that enacted this form of protocol on their own, which critics called a “forced outing” policy of transgender students.

The new law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2025.

One of Musk’s 11 children transitioned and changed her name in 2022, after turning 18, and has since reportedly cut ties with her father.

SpaceX and X, formerly Twitter, did not immediately respond to a series of questions about Musk’s announcement on Tuesday, however an email sent to X autoresponded, “Busy now, please check back later.”

In response to the announcement on X Tuesday, Newsom flippantly posted, “You bent the knee” with a screenshot of Trump writing about Musk visiting the White House during his presidency.

California Republicans blamed Newsom for the tech companies’ departures.

“Gavin Newsom’s anti-parent agenda isn’t just bad for families — now it’s doing serious damage to California’s economy,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher, R-Nicolaus, said in a statement.

“With the highest unemployment rate in the nation, you’d think our governor would be doing everything possible to protect jobs. Instead, he’s pandering to extremists in his party by cutting parents out of their kids’ education and driving even more businesses to pack up for other states.”

This is not the first time the billionaire entrepreneur has moved operations out of California over political differences with Newsom.

In 2021, he moved his electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla’s main headquarters to Austin, Texas, citing frustration with pandemic lockdowns.

In early 2023, Musk and Newsom announced in a joint press conference the electric vehicle maker’s engineering headquarters’ return to California. The announcement came soon after Musk took over X in a $44 billion deal and said he would be spending more time in the state.

In a post on X, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, criticized Musk and questioned whether he would follow through with the move.

“California literally made you with taxpayer subsidies & because it’s the best place around,” Wiener wrote. “Will this be a fake temper tantrum move just like Tesla’s fake ‘move’ to Texas?”

SpaceX has received more than $11 million in support from the state.