The Court of Appeal has upheld an earlier court ruling that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under Hong Kong's inheritance laws.

The decision followed a lengthy legal battle that started in 2019 when the late Edgar Ng applied for a judicial review of the city’s inheritance laws.

Ng was concerned that if he died without leaving behind a will, his properties might not be passed on to his husband, Henry Li, whom he married in 2017.

Ng took his life in 2020 after years of battling depression.

The Court of First Instance previously ruled that the exclusion of same-sex couples from legal entitlements and benefits under the Intestates' Estates Ordinance (IEO) and the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Ordinance (IPO) was discriminatory.

The Department of Justice subsequently lodged an appeal, but was on Tuesday rejected by a panel of three appeal court judges.

Justices Peter Cheung, Maria Yuen and Thomas Au dismissed the government's argument that heterosexual and same-sex couples are treated differently under the city's inheritance laws due to their differences in legal obligations.

"They are excluded wholly from taking the benefits of the provisions of the IEO and IPO because they had entered into a same-sex marriage and the difference in treatment is, in my view, based on their sexual orientation," judge Cheung wrote in the ruling.

The judges also rejected the government's argument that differential treatment would help maintain the special status of traditional marriage, which in turn would encourage more opposite-sex couples to get married and form a family.

"The [Secretary for Justice] has failed in all the grounds of appeal," the judges concluded.

Li – who replaced his late husband as the judicial review's applicant – issued a statement through his law firm, Daly & Associates, urging the government to respect the ruling.

"It has been incredibly painful to have lost Edgar. It added insult to injury – that the government repeatedly argued in open court I am not Edgar's husband and should be treated as a stranger to him, while I was still mourning," he said.

"I hope the government will respect today's judgement and at long last give Edgar the respect and dignity he'd always deserved.”

Jerome Yau, co-founder of Hong Kong Marriage Equality, called the court's decision "a big news for the LGBTQ+ community".

"It's another step forward, but we are still some distance away from full equality," he told reporters outside the High Court.

"Same-sex couples should be able to live a dignified life in Hong Kong. Instead of thinking whether they should appeal this judgement or the previous two housing cases' judgement, I think it'll be far better for the government to spend the next two years to focus its energy on how to implement the Court of Final Appeal's decision with respect to the Jimmy Sham case."

Hong Kong's top court had in September ruled in a landmark case that the government must come up with an official framework to recognise same-sex partnerships, while giving officials two years to formulate the details.

Last week, the Court of Appeal also upheld two earlier rulings that favour the granting of subsidised housing benefits to same-sex couples.