Top Hong Kong court dismisses government appeal in gay rights housing case

By Jessie Pang

Hong Kong's top court on Tuesday upheld three earlier rulings that favoured granting public housing and inheritance rights to married same-sex couples, citing equality provisions in the city's mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law.

The ruling by Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal is the latest legal victory for the city's LGBTQ+ community since 2023.

The Court of Final Appeal judges Andrew Cheung, Robert Ribeiro, Joseph Fok, Johnson Lam and Frank Stock said they rejected the government's arguments that same-sex and opposite sex couples were not comparable in terms of their right to public housing.

The lower court was "right to conclude that permitting same-sex married couples to apply would not affect opposite-sex couples’ protected right to apply," the judges said in a written ruling.

The government's challenge to the top court came after the lower Court of Appeal earlier upheld rulings in favour of granting same-sex couples who married overseas subsidised housing rights and inheritance rights in three cases.

One involved the city's Housing Authority declining to consider an application by permanent resident Nick Infinger to rent a public flat with his husband, because their marriage in Canada was not recognised in Hong Kong.

The other involved same-sex couple Edgar Ng and his husband Henry Li who were denied joint-ownership of a government-subsidised flat by the Housing Authority, because their marriage in Britain was not recognised in Hong Kong.

Ng also launched the third case, expressing fears that if he died without leaving a will, he would not be able to pass his property to his husband under the city's inheritance laws.

Li took over the two cases after Ng took his own life in 2020 after years of battling depression.

Hong Kong's top court last September ruled against same-sex marriage but acknowledged the need for same-sex couples to have "access to an alternative legal framework in order to meet basic social requirements".

In February 2023, the top court ruled that the policy of barring transgender people from changing the gender shown on their ID cards unless they underwent full sex reassignment surgery was a violation of their rights and unconstitutional.