Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is threatening to move his massive car production facility in Fremont, California to either Texas or Nevada because county officials refuse to loosen their coronavirus lockdowns.

In the meantime, Musk has filed a federal lawsuit against Alameda County, saying the forced closure of the carmaker’s largest plant “violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In a Twitter post, Musk wrote:

The unelected & ignorant “Interim Health Officer” of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!

Local officials have repeatedly pushed back against the company’s efforts to start making its signature electric cars once again:

The suit and Musk’s public comments come a day after the company said it would resume vehicle production, only to again provoke the ire of local health officials, who said Tesla “must not reopen.” Alameda County leaders said Tesla did not meet the criteria to resume operations even as California began opening up other parts of the state.

It’s a big change in the relationship between the company and the county. When the Fremont facility was announced in 2016, locals hailed its arrival and eagerly awaited the “jolt” it would give to the economy.

Image Credit: Smnt / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)