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Elon Musk celebrated the firing of a state employee from Texas who refused to remove his gendered pronouns from his work email signature.
Frank Zamora was laid off from the Texas Real Estate Commission, a state agency that governs real estate practices, last month.
The 31-year-old refused to remove his gendered pronouns from his email signature following a mandate issued days after Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies” and “comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes – male and female.”
Abbott, a Republican, took to X Thursday to celebrate Zamora’s dismissal and shared a report from the Austin American-Statesman, tweeting: “A Texas state employee refused to remove pronouns from email signature. He was fired before noon.”
Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has played a major role in the Trump administration’s firing of an estimated 20,000 federal workers, commented on Abbott’s post with two fire emojis.
Abbott’s initiative came 10 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office on January 20 that stated it is “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
The order also stated that departments must “ensure that official government documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex accurately.” Two days later, Trump issued a sweeping executive order banning DEI initiatives across the federal government.
Zamora’s supervisor at the TREC sent him and his colleague an email about the company’s directive to remove pronouns from email signatures.
“Greetings all. It was a beautiful weekend in Austin and I hope you were able to enjoy it,” began the email obtained by the Guardian. “On a very different note, based on a recent directive from Governor Abbott, the agency is modifying its employee email signature block template by removing preferred pronouns.”
Asking employees to ensure their signature complied with the attached template, the email continued: “I understand this change may have an impact on employees and I am sensitive to that. The Governor, however, has directed the agency to act and so we will.”
Zamora penned a letter and noted his refusal to comply with the directive. He told the Guardian he was “ultimately given the choice between removing the pronouns, resigning or being terminated.”
He was terminated after refusing to either resign or change his email signature.
The Independent has contacted the TREC for more information.
