where less onerous tests are used in assessing applications to amend the gender marker. Second, the Court rejected the argument that full surgery was justified by a need to avoid alleged administrative problems arising from any incongruence between a transgender person's physical appearance and gender marker, pointing out that the most common cases of incongruence arise from the discordance between the gender marker and a transgender person's outward appearance, not the appearance of their genitalia. Third, the Court did not accept that the small risk of reversal of female-to-male transition leading to pregnancy justified the requirement for full surgery. The policy was held unlawful as it failed the proportionality test. The Court stated, in obiter, that in any case, the policy failed to strike a reasonable balance between the rights of transgender persons and the societal benefits of the policy. Accordingly, the Court quashed the Commissioner's decision to refuse the appellants' applications to alter the gender markers on their identity cards, and declared the Commissioner's policy of requiring full sex reassignment surgery to be unconstitutional. References Hong Kong case law LGBT rights in Hong Kong Transgender case law 2023 in Hong Kong 2023 in LGBT history Human rights Human rights in Hong Kong