A UK court has overturned laws criminalising same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago.
London’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), the Caribbean island’s final court of appeal, ruled the laws were not in keeping with the “fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life.”
The judgement is the result of an 11-year legal battle brought by dual-citizen Jason Jones, 62, who said he hoped it would “accelerate the fight for full equality.”
Jones had successfully challenged the laws in 2018 in Trinidad’s High Court, however the ruling was overturned on appeal by the Trinidadian government.
It is the first time the JCPC has ever decided on a case to decriminalise same-sex intimacy, and campaigners hope it will spark similar successful legal challenges elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
Prior to this historic decision, Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries continuing to criminalise homosexuality based on colonial-era British laws.
Under these laws, consensual same-sex intimacy is punishable by imprisonment, and in some cases carries the death penalty.
The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago had argued that the law was protected from legal challenges by the “savings law clauses” – which carried over existing British laws into newly independent states.
Representatives for Jones argued that the laws violated an individual’s right to privacy and argued the government’s changes to the laws in 1986 – which saw stricter punishments introduced – meant the savings clause protections no longer applied.
The judicial committee unanimously found in favour of Jones.
Handing down the judgement, Lord Sales 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, human rights campaigner and appellant in the appeal, 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.”
Lawyer Anand Ramlogan SC, representing Jones, said the judgement was a “landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago.”
