A London-based court has struck down laws that criminalised same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago. The decision closes an 11-year legal fight brought by Jason Jones, a 62-year-old dual citizen.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Caribbean island’s final court of appeal, ruled that the laws did not match the “fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life.”
How Jason Jones’s 11-year challenge unfolded
Jones first won his case in Trinidad’s High Court in 2018. The Trinidadian government then had that ruling overturned on appeal. The judicial committee unanimously found in Jones’s favour.
His representatives argued that the laws violated an individual’s right to privacy. They also said changes made in 1986, which introduced stricter punishments, meant the protections of the “savings law clauses” no longer applied. The Attorney General had argued that those clauses shielded the law from challenge, as they carried over British laws into newly independent states.
Why the ruling matters across the Commonwealth
This is the first time the committee has decided a case seeking to decriminalise same-sex intimacy. Campaigners hope it will prompt similar legal challenges elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
Before the decision, Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries that still criminalised homosexuality under colonial-era British laws. Under those rules, consensual same-sex intimacy can be punished by imprisonment and, in some cases, the death penalty.
Judge and campaigners react to the verdict
Lord Sales, who delivered the judgment, told the court 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, a human rights campaigner and the appellant, said the laws “never reflected who we are as a people and a nation.” He added: “They told LGBTQ+ people that we were criminals in our own country. That message ends today.”
Lawyer Anand Ramlogan SC, who represents Jones, called the judgment a “landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago.”
