Hong Kong court rules that gay couples get equal housing rights
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The ruling by Hong Kong's Court of Appeal is the latest in a series of legal breakthroughs for gay rights advocates.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HONG KONG - A Hong Kong court on Tuesday dismissed a government bid to deny same-sex married couples the right to rent and own public housing, saying that it was “discriminatory in nature” and a complete denial of such couples’ rights.
The ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal is the latest in a series of legal breakthroughs for gay rights advocates
The government had challenged two High Court rulings that said it was “unconstitutional and unlawful” for the city’s housing authority to exclude same-sex couples who had married abroad from public housing.
The appeal involved two cases. In one, the authority had declined to consider a permanent resident’s application to rent a public flat with his husband because their marriage in Canada was not recognised in Hong Kong.
The other involved a same-sex couple who were denied joint ownership of a government-subsidised flat by the authority because their marriage in Britain was not recognised in Hong Kong.
The Court of Appeal justices Jeremy Poon, Aarif Barma and Thomas Au said in a written judgment that the authority’s treatment of gay married couples was “discriminatory in nature” and they should be afforded equal treatment.
The judges wrote: “The differential treatment in the present cases is a more severe form of indirect discrimination than most cases because the criterion is one which same-sex couples can never meet.”
One of the men involved in the second case, Mr Henry Li, welcomed the ruling in a Facebook post.
Rights group Hong Kong Marriage Equality also welcomed the decision, saying it had made clear “that discrimination and unequal treatment on the ground of sexual orientation has no place in public policy decisions”.
In September, Hong Kong’s top court 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”.
The government has two years to come up with the framework.
A Hong Kong court in September sided with a married lesbian couple who argued that both women should have parental status over their child born via reciprocal in-vitro fertilisation.
Activists in other parts of Asia are watching Hong Kong’s courts in the hope that their rulings could influence campaigns for reform elsewhere. REUTERS
