A United Kingdom court has overturned laws criminalising same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago, marking a significant victory for LGBTQ+ rights following an 11-year legal battle.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which serves as the Caribbean nation’s final court of appeal, unanimously ruled that the laws violated the fundamental right to respect for private and family life.
The judgement followed a legal challenge by Jason Jones, a 62-year-old dual citizen, who had successfully contested the legislation at Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court in 2018.
However, the government subsequently appealed the decision, leading to the reversal of the ruling.
Jones, who has campaigned for human rights, expressed hope that the landmark judgement would “accelerate the fight for full equality.”
Reacting to the verdict, he said, “These laws never reflected who we are as a people and a nation – diverse, multiracial, and secular.
They told LGBTQ+ people that we were criminals in our own country. That message ends today.”
The case is the first in which the Privy Council has ruled in favour of decriminalising same-sex intimacy, with campaigners hoping the decision will encourage similar legal challenges across other Commonwealth countries.
Before the ruling, Trinidad and Tobago was among approximately 34 Commonwealth nations that continued to criminalise homosexuality under colonial-era British legislation.
The laws prescribed imprisonment for consensual same-sex intimacy, with some provisions carrying the death penalty.
The country’s Attorney General had argued that the legislation was protected from judicial challenges under “savings law clauses”, which preserved certain British laws following independence.
However, Jones’s legal representatives maintained that the laws infringed on the right to privacy.
They also argued that amendments introduced by the government in 1986, which increased the severity of the punishments, invalidated the protections provided by the savings clause.
Delivering the judgement, Lord Sales said the laws “cannot be regarded as reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of an individual”.
Jones’s lawyer, Anand Ramlogan SC, described the decision as a “landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago.”
