Former Congressman “Long Hair” successfully fought for equal rights for men in prison, but lamented that the court did not help solve the problem of equal political rights and the treatment of social movement inmates.

Former legislator Leung Kwok Hung, commonly known as “Long Hair,” appealed the Correctional Services Department’s rule that male inmates must cut their hair “as short as possible” to the Court of Final Appeal, which ruled in favor of Leung because the rule, which applies only to male inmates, constitutes direct gender discrimination and violates the Sex Discrimination Ordinance. He also lamented the court’s failure to address the greatest injustice of political inequality in Hong Kong.

However, the ruling can help the EOC in dealing with cases of gender discrimination. According to the EOC, the ruling clearly defines that “less favorable treatment” under the SDO must be reasonably related to “disparate treatment”, which provides clear guidelines for the EOC’s standard of proof in the future. In the past five years, the Council has received 231 complaints of sex discrimination.

Leung Kwok Hung, nicknamed “Long Hair” for his long hair, was sentenced to four weeks in prison in 2011 for storming the Legislative Council’s by-election forum and was asked to cut his long hair when he was imprisoned in 2016. He won a judicial review of the Department of Corrections’ requirement that male inmates have their hair cut in 2017, but the Department’s appeal was upheld and Long Hair appealed to the highest court in the land.

The Department of Correctional Services (CSD) explained that the requirement for male inmates to have their hair cut short is to ensure prison discipline so that the appearance of inmates is reasonably consistent, and that the requirement for men to have short hair and women to have either long or short hair is an application of the traditional gender stereotypes of Hong Kong society to inmates, and does not mean that men are treated less favorably.

However, the five judges of the Court of Final Appeal unanimously rejected the Department of Correctional Services’ argument. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma wrote that the fact that male inmates do not have the right to choose the length of their hair, but female inmates do, reflects less favorable treatment than female inmates, and that the prison authorities’ failure to explain the link between ensuring prison discipline and the imposition of socially stereotyped images of gender, as well as their failure to prove that the Hong Kong norm of short hair for men and either long or short hair for women is sexist enough to justify an appeal without addressing the constitutionality of the prison regulations.

He hopes that the judicial system will remain as impartial as possible, but believes that it is important to have this “well-known and universal value” affirmed in court, and calls on the people of Hong Kong to continue to strive for the most basic equal political rights.