Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against the California Coastal Commission

I think Elon Musk’s recent lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission deserves more attention than it appears to be getting.

Mr. Musk has asserted that the California Coastal Commission (CCC) denied permission for his company SpaceX to launch rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base because of Mr. Musk’s political affiliations and apparent political views.

When I first heard that he had sued on that basis, I assumed that Mr. Musk might be speculating on the motivations of the CCC members who voted against his request, and thus might be stretching to make those allegations. But then I heard audio clips of the comments made by the CCC commissioners during the hearing on the request (the request actually came from the U.S. Space Force, not from SpaceX directly). They commented especially on Mr. Musk’s association with presidential candidate Donald Trump. The commissioners were quite vocal about their distaste (even contempt) for Mr. Musk’s political affiliations, a topic having nothing to do with the CCC’s mission of protecting the California coastline — creating a clear apparent presumption that their vote was based on Mr. Musk’s political affiliations.

It should be quite concerning if a government entity is permitted to grant or deny government permits on the basis of the permit applicant’s political affiliations or ideological (or other) beliefs. The California Coastal Commission has enormous power over people who own property on or near the ocean coast of California, including whether the property owner can build or remodel a house. If the CCC can grant or deny permission based on the property owner’s political views, affiliations or ideological beliefs, a large number of property owners and prospective property owners will be affected.

We had seen a little bit of this type of thing a few years ago when we saw a spate of cities and government-run universities denying building and operating permits for the chicken fast food chain Chick-fil-A because the politicians in those cities and universities did not like the political and cultural ideologies held by the founder of the fast food chain.

Many years ago there was an effort within the California State Bar (the state government licensing entity for lawyers) to factor into its operational decisions a potential vendor’s position on “Proposition 8,” which had to do with the public’s effort to define “marriage.” As a licensed California lawyer, I had worried that the Bar might start factoring that issue into licensing, but that didn’t happen in the subsequent fifteen or so years. But I suppose it could still happen.

Maybe we’d have fewer “conspiracy theories” about potential American totalitarian government regimes if the existing government entities didn’t provide so much evidence that they behave as totalitarian regimes.

And once again, although the Left keeps claiming that people of the Right are the nascent authoritarians, it’s the Left that keeps demonstrating authoritarian behaviors.