A court in Hong Kong has ruled in favour of a transgender individual who challenged a regulation criminalising the use of bathrooms that do not align with their chosen gender identity, a step toward recognising the rights of transgender people in the Chinese financial hub.
Judge Russell Coleman on Wednesday suspended the effect of the ruling for a year. The suspended ruling is to “consider whether it wishes to implement a way to deal with the contravention”.
The judge said the rules banning transgender people from using the bathroom matching their gender identity are discriminatory and violate the right to equality under Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
He said in the judgment that the regulations and "drawing the line of a person's biological sex at birth create a disproportionate and unnecessary intrusion into the privacy and equality rights".
The decision came on the complaint of a person identified as K, who was born a woman and identifies as a man in 2022. K launched a legal petition to allow transgender people to use public toilet that aligns with their identified gender.
K called to expand the exemption in the Public Conveniences (Conduct and Behaviour) Regulations to those transgender people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and have a medical need to undergo the process of living in their identified gender.
“This is a matter of the line-drawing, which seems to me to be a question for the government or legislature to address,” Mr Coleman wrote in his judgment.
He said the matter of drawing a line between a “female person” and a “male person” is “an answer not appropriately given by the courts, and is more appropriately a matter for legislation”.
Currently, only children under 5 years old accompanied by an opposite sex adult can enter a public washroom designated for the opposite sex. Those violating the rule face a fine of up to 2,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $255).
This marks the latest step towards recognising the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Hong Kong, which has in recent years revised policies for the community after legal challenges.
Earlier this year, Hong Kong’s government proposed a registration system that would recognise same-sex partnerships formed overseas, granting such couples more rights in the city.
In 2023, Hong Kong's top court ruled that full sex reassignment surgery should not be a prerequisite for transgender people to have their gender changed on their official identity cards.
In April 2024, activist Henry Tse, who won the legal battle in 2023 and received his new ID card reflecting
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