Landmark win for gay Hong Kong civil servant over husband’s benefits
Judge rejects claim that Civil Service Bureau had to avoid undermining ‘the integrity of the institution of marriage’
In a landmark victory with far-reaching implications for Hong Kong’s sexual minorities, a gay civil servant’s husband will be entitled to the same benefits as his heterosexual colleagues’ spouses after a successful legal challenge against government policy.
Wrapping up a case seen by advocates as a “rare judicial recognition” of the city’s gay community, the High Court on Friday rejected the Civil Service Bureau’s stance that it was denying benefits for same-sex spouses to protect “the integrity of the institution of marriage”.
Senior immigration officer Leung Chun-kwong, who married his partner, Scott Adams, in New Zealand in 2014, launched the challenge in 2015 against the secretary for the civil service and the commissioner of the Inland Revenue Department, which was reluctant to recognise their union.
The Court of First Instance on Friday ruled in Leung’s favour against the bureau in an unprecedented decision that may have an immediate bearing on other gay civil servants who married overseas. But it did not rule in his favour against the taxman.
In his 44-page judgment, Mr Justice Anderson Chow Ka-ming called the bureau’s policy “indirect discrimination” and rejected its assertion that the secretary had a justifiable aim “to act in line with the prevailing marriage law of Hong Kong” and not to “undermine the integrity of the institution of marriage … hence safeguarding public order”.
