In Hong Kong, a judge ruled to strike down regulations criminalizing the use of bathrooms designated for the opposite sex by ruling in favor of transgender people’s rights to access public toilets matching their gender identity.
Prior to this, only children under five years old accompanied by an opposite sex adult can enter a public washroom designated for those assigned the opposite sex at birth. Violators face a fine of up to 2,000 Hong Kong dollars ($255).
This was challenged by K, who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male, in 2022, as he sought to expand the exemption to pre-operative transgender people who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and have a medical need to undergo the process of living in their identified gender.
According to K, the ban violated his constitutional rights by prohibiting him from using public toilets allocated for men.
Judge Russell Coleman agreed with K, approving judicial review, saying the regulations contravene an article of the city’s mini-constitution that stipulates all residents should be equal before the law. According to him, consideration need to be given to “drawing the line of a person’s biological sex at birth create a disproportionate and unnecessary intrusion into the privacy and equality rights.”
But Coleman suspended this declaration to strike down the regulations for one year to allow the government “to consider whether it wishes to implement a way to deal with the contravention.”
There have been pro-LGBTQIA+ development in Hong Kong the past years. In 2023, for instance, 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. So that in 2024, the government revised its policy to allow people who have not completed full gender-affirmation surgery to change their genders on ID cards as long as they fulfill certain conditions.
