Elon Musk today announced that he’s taking the X Corp. and Space X Corp. headquarters out of California following the state governor’s signing of a bill that prohibits school districts from disclosing students’ gender identity.

Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) enacted the SAFETY ACT on Monday, legislation designed to protect LGBTQ+ students in the state. The law specifically prohibits schools from disclosing to parents any changes to their child’s identity, such as if they change their name or start to ask to be addressed with a different pronoun.

Musk, has been vocal in the past in criticizing what he refers to as the culturally divisive “woke mind virus,” wrote on X that the law was the “last straw.” He added, “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 explained that in the past, he had “warned” Governor Newsom that laws like the one he’d just signed would “force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.” He later said that X would also move but to Austin.

Musk’s beef might also have some basis in his home life. In 2022, his then-18-year-old daughter legally changed her name to distance herself from her billionaire father. She also changed her sex from male to female. “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she wrote.  Musk’s biographer at the time said Musk put the blame on his daughter’s art school for encouraging her politics to switch to “full-on communism.”

At the time, Musk said he would start “actively lobbying to criminalize” gender-affirming care for young transgender people. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, or CCDH, later said trans abuse on X had increased and that instances of the LGBTQ+ community being accused of “grooming children for sexual abuse” had gone up 119% since Musk took over what was then Twitter in 2022. Musk sued, saying the report was “misleading,” but the case was thrown out in 2024.

It’s unknown if Musk will remove every staff member from California. X Corp. employs about 1,500 people, and Space X about 13,000. In 2021, over California’s COVID-19 lockdowns, Musk moved the Tesla Inc. headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin but kept an “engineering headquarters” in California.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr