Hong Kong’s top court handed down a landmark ruling on Monday finding that authorities’ refusal to allow two transgender people to use their preferred gender on their identity cards without undergoing full reassignment surgery had breached their rights. The ruling, the result of a years-long legal battle, meant the government could no longer impose such surgical procedures – often considered risky by the transgender community – as a precondition for wider gender recognition. “I can live like any other man,” one of the litigants, Henry Edward Tse, a trans man, told the Post after the Court of Final Appeal victory.