Elon Musk will move the headquarters of SpaceX and X out of California after Governor Newsom Monday signed into law a bill that will bar California schools from requiring teachers to notify parents if their child chooses to use different pronouns or expresses other transgender characteristics at school.

“This is the final straw,” Mr. Musk wrote 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,” he declared. 

A few minutes later, the billionaire executive announced that he will also move the headquarters of X, formerly known as Twitter, to Austin from San Francisco, adding that he has “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.” 

Mr. Musk moved Tesla out of California in 2021 after criticizing the state’s strict Covid-19 policies. 

The legislation in question, signed into law by Mr. Newsom on Monday, will ban policies adopted by some school districts in the state to require teachers to notify parents if a student asks to switch pronouns or chooses to use facilities of the opposite sex.

Polling shows that a majority of adults in California — as well as across the country — support parental notification policies. Since 2020, eight states have passed laws to mandate such notification policies, and five have approved legislation to encourage parental notification. 

The new California law is set to take effect on January 1. However, a nonprofit public interest litigation firm, the Liberty Justice Center, is putting together a lawsuit to challenge the measure in court. 

“We have good arguments against it,” the president of the Liberty Justice Center, Jacob Huebert, tells the Sun.

“The primary argument is rooted in parents’ rights to direct the upbringing of their children. And parents don’t give up that right just because they send their child to public school,” he says.  

Further, he says the bill “violates FERPA, the federal statute that gives parents a right to have records about their children’s education.”

“School districts shouldn’t have to violate parents’ constitutional rights to comply with California law, and if they’re faced with the choice of following one or the other, of course, the federal Constitution is supreme,” Mr. Huebert adds. 

“Gavin Newsom defied parents’ constitutional and God-given right to raise their children by signing #AB1955 which codifies the government’s authority to keep secrets from parents,” a California assemblyman, Bill Essaylim, wrote on X.

He added that the bill’s passing is “both immoral and unconstitutional,” and that “we will challenge it in court to stop the government from keeping secrets from parents.” 

The proposal was initially introduced by an assemblyman and LGBTQ caucus member, Chris Ward, who commended Mr. Newsom’s decision to sign the bill into law. “While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family,” he noted. 

“With the governor’s signature on AB 1955, a first-in-the-nation policy, reaffirms California’s position as a leader and safe haven for LGBTQ+ youth everywhere,” a state senator who leads the LGBTQ caucus, Susan Eggman, said in a statement. 

The bill sparked heated discussion in June when it was up for a vote in the California assembly, with the issue of parental authority at the center of the debate. Many of those who opposed the bill argued that the ban would encourage teachers to keep parents in the dark about the mental health and well-being of their children. 

Conversely, supporters said that school notification policies force teachers to “out” students to their parents before those students may be ready to do so.  

Tensions ran so high that when the bill was returned to the assembly after it passed the state senate, a Democratic assemblyman, Corey Jackson, had to be physically restrained after aggressively approaching a Republican member who spoke out against the bill.