Alameda county health officials cautioned Tesla against reopening its car factory yesterday. Ceo Elon Musk tweeted today that the company would sue the county and move its headquarters out of state.

Musk has been a vocal critic of coronavirus shelter-in-place orders. He also urged supporters on Twitter to’voice your disagreement as strongly as possible with Alameda County’.

The Alameda county health care services agency and public health department have been’working closely with the Tesla team on the ground in Fremont’.

The statement, issued several hours after Musk’s tweets, did not reference the Tesla CEO’s comments or mention him by name.

Tesla will move its HQ and future programs to texas/nevada immediately. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA..

‘it is our collective responsibility to move through the phases of reopening and loosening the restrictions of the shelter-in-place order in the safest way possible, guided by data and science’.

Tesla announced plans to resume’limited operations’ at its Fremont facility yesterday. But officials in Alameda County, where Fremont is located, said that it was still under a shelter-in-place order and that Tesla did n’t meet its criteria to reopen.

State-Level guidance allowing manufacturing to resume some production did n’t supersede county-level restrictions. The company had unsucessfully tried to argue that Tesla’s production should be considered critical infrastructure.

Tesla reduced pay for all its US employees as of April 13th. Tesla put most hourly workers who ca n’t work remotely on unpaid furlough. What would happen to the roughly 10,000 workers at the plant if Tesla were to move operations out of state.

Both Tesla and Musk settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018. In 2019, the terms of the settlement were renegotiated. Under the new terms, a company lawyer must approve Musk’s tweets about certain parts of Tesla’s business before Musk sends them.

The new addition adds statement from Alameda County spokesperson and includes additional Tweet from Musk. Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.