Housing Authority wins bid to ask Hong Kong’s highest court to quash ruling giving same-sex couples right to pass on public housing to spouses
- Housing Authority given leave to ask Court of Final Appeal to reverse earlier decision allowing same-sex couples to inherit public housing flats
- Move follows unsuccessful Court of Appeal bid last November to overturn earlier ruling that backed challenge to existing rules by Edgar Li and husband Henry Li
Hong Kong’s Housing Authority has been given a final chance to ask a court to quash a ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to inherit public housing flats owned by their partners.
The Court of Appeal on Monday gave the go-ahead to the authority to ask the Court of Final Appeal to reverse a decision in favour of the late Edgar Ng Hon-lam, who launched a successful legal challenge five years ago after he learned he could not leave the flat he had bought under the Home Ownership Scheme to his husband, Henry Li Yik-ho.
The Chief Judge of the High Court, Mr Justice Jeremy Poon, Mr Justice Aarif Barma and Mr Justice Thomas Au agreed in a written judgment there was a “great general or public importance” to bring questions that involved allocation of public or subsidised housing before the city’s top court on appeal.
“We are of the view that the grounds of the appeal … cannot be said to be unarguable,” three judges wrote in the six-page judgment.
One of the six arguments made by the authority to support its application to go to the last appeal stage concerned whether the constitutional right to apply for public rented housing was “exclusively” conferred on opposite-sex married couples by Article 36 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, which stipulates that “residents shall have the right to social welfare in accordance with law”.