• Elon Musk has reacted strongly to the passing of a new Bill in California regarding the disclosure of student sexuality in schools.
• The head of X and SpaceX says he plans to move his companies’ headquarters to Texas.
• He labelled this latest law as the “final straw”.

Elon Musk may soon be relocating the headquarters of two of his companies – X and SpaceX.

This following his reaction to the passing of a new Bill (AB 1955) in the State of California by Governor Gavin Newsom. One element of the Bill in question, which is now a Law, has prohibited the creation of any mechanisms that would disclose a student’s sexuality without their consent.

More specifically the Law explains that no, “school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and the state special schools, and a member of the governing board or body of those educational entities, from enacting or enforcing any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by law.”

Musk has taken umbrage with this, noting in a post on X in response that, “This is the final straw.”

“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,” he added.

He followed up the post by adding that X too would be moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.

Whether Musk will follow through with his latest declaration remains to be seen, but this is not the first time that he has signalled an intent to move his business operations outside of the State of California, as TechCrunch notes that he moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in 2021.

That particular move happened, but Tesla still has a large presence in California. As such, it will be interesting to see whether both SpaceX and X employees will be willing to relocate.

For the former, the move would make sense given Musk’s sizeable investment in Starbase to date, as well as plans to further invest in the Starbase facility, but the prospect of workers at the social media platform wanting to do the same seems less likely at this stage, especially as Twitter was founded in San Francisco in 2006.

Only time will tell whether this is all just posturing, but given Musk’s increasingly political stances of late, relocating X and SpaceX may very well happen down the line.

[Image – Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash]