Musk’s SpaceX sues California regulator over rocket launches

The suit, filed Tuesday in California’s central district, marks the billionaire’s latest volley in a long-running feud with the Golden State.

The commission Thursday rejected a request by the U.S. Space Force to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, Ca.

Speaking at the meeting, commissioner Gretchen Newsom referenced Musk’s social-media posts about the upcoming presidential election and accused him of spreading falsehoods about Hurricane Helene.

“Right now Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet," Newsom said.

The commission rejected the request by six votes to four.

SpaceX accused the commission of unlawfully overreaching its authority and violating “the rights of free speech and due process enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution," court documents show.

“Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO," the company said in its complaint.

Newsom claimed Musk harbored an anti-California agenda, saying the CEO had enjoyed billions of dollars in state subsidies while threatening to relocate his companies to Texas due to “bigoted beliefs against California’s safeguards and protections over our transgender community."

She also questioned SpaceX’s commitment to workplace safety, referencing fines the company has received and citing allegations of injuries at the company’s facilities.

The commission’s vote doesn’t necessarily mean that SpaceX won’t be able to increase its launch rate from California. SpaceX is a major government contractor, launching payloads of the Pentagon and selling satellite services to national-security and other federal agencies, military officials have said, according to commission documents.

As such, military officials believe SpaceX launches from the California base are considered a federal agency activity.

“We are assessing the outcome from Thursday, and it is too soon to comment on launch cadence beyond the current capacity constraint," Col. Mark Shoemaker, commander of the Space Force unit that oversees Vandenberg, said in a statement.

In a post on his social-media platform X Tuesday, Musk said members of the commission should resign and face legal consequences. “The Coastal Commission has one job – take care of the California coast," he wrote. “It is illegal for them to make decisions based on what they (mostly wrongly) think are my politics." In an earlier post, Musk accused the commission of violating the First Amendment.

SpaceX didn’t respond to requests for comment.

On Sunday, the company marked an engineering milestone for its Starship vehicle, successfully catching a towering booster rocket back at its launchpad in South Texas. It was SpaceX’s first attempt at such a catch, a feat that the company and Musk have said is key to reducing the cost of rocket launches.

The suit isn’t Musk’s first falling out with California, but part of a long, painful breakup that centers on the entrepreneur’s three main passions—SpaceX, Tesla and X, which he acquired in 2022 when it was known as Twitter.

Musk’s many gripes with California, where he founded both SpaceX and Tesla, have covered everything from Covid-19 stay-at-home orders to transgender rights and local crime rates.As the pandemic spread in May 2020, Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters out of California, calling the closure of a company factory a power grab that defied the U.S. Constitution.

Musk’s break with predominantly blue California came full circle this year as the entrepreneur fully embraced Republican politics and backed former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Musk officially endorsed Trump on July 13, just days after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally.

After he endorsed Trump, Musk turned again on Democrats in California, reigniting old battles from 2020 and taking new shots at an old advocate, Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Days later, Musk announced plans to relocate the headquarters of X and SpaceX to Texas. The move came in response to Newsom signing a law that aims to prevent schools from informing families if their children identify as gay or transgender.

“This is the final straw," Musk wrote on X. He cited the law as well as “many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies."Earlier this month, Musk joined Trump on stage for a rally in Butler, Pa., the site of the assassination attempt. “As you can see I am not just MAGA—I am Dark MAGA," Musk told the crowd after jumping up and down on stage.

Write to Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com