In 2014, Hong Kong immigration officer Leung Chun-kwong married his partner of about a decade in New Zealand, where same-sex marriage had become legal the previous year. On Friday, a High Court judge in Hong Kong, which doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages, said that Leung’s husband was entitled to the same benefits available to the spouses of heterosexual employees of the civil service, the South China Morning Post reported over the weekend.
The judge disagreed with the civil services’ stance that extending the benefits would undermine the integrity of marriage in Hong Kong, the Post reported. A lawyer for Leung said the decision was a major one—an instance of “rare judicial recognition” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the city. [...]
But there may be other ways in which Hong Kong law is ripe for further legal challenges. The judge in this case didn’t overrule the tax department’s decision not to extend married status to the couple, noting the tax department has defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. However, an interpretation guide (pdf) from the tax department also states that overseas marriages should be recognized—”the validity of a marriage is determined by the law of the place where it was celebrated”—which appears to create a contradiction in the regulation.
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