Anti-gay laws in Trinidad and Tobago overturned

The London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which serves as Trinidad and Tobago's final court of appeal, ruled on Tuesday that the twin-island nation's laws criminalizing "buggery" and "gross indecency" between consenting adults are unconstitutional. The laws carried penalties of up to five years in prison for buggery and two years for gross indecency. Privy Council Judge Philip Sales wrote that "those laws cannot be regarded as reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual" and that "laws which seek to criminalize such activities cannot be justified." The ruling nullifies statutes dating back to a 1925 British colonial act, which itself originated from Henry VIII's 1500s Buggery Act.

The case was brought by Jason Jones, a 62-year-old LGBTQ+ rights activist born in Trinidad and living in the UK. Jones first won in Trinidad's High Court in 2018, but the government appealed and the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal overturned that victory in 2025. Jones then took the case to the Privy Council for a final appeal. His lawyers argued that a 1986 Trinidadian law that repealed the 1925 act and introduced harsher penalties — including extending criminalization to women — meant the savings law clause protecting pre-independence laws from challenge no longer applied. "This is no longer blaming Henry VIII and the British. This is our own homegrown homophobia," Jones told CNN. The Privy Council agreed, ruling that savings clauses "should be interpreted narrowly" and that the right to private and family life protects "such a core part of human identity as one's sexual orientation."

The judgment applies only to Trinidad and Tobago, but activists and legal experts say it creates a powerful precedent for other former British colonies in the Caribbean that retain the Privy Council as their highest court. According to the UK charity Human Dignity Trust, at least four other Caribbean nations — Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — still criminalize sex between men. Attorney Ria Mohammed, director of the Caribbean Centre for Human Rights, noted the irony that Trinidad and Tobago had to use its former colonial ruler's judicial system to strike down a colonial law, and said the case has renewed debate in the region about replacing the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice. Five countries — Belize, Guyana, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Dominica — have already made that switch. Jones said he hoped the ruling would "accelerate the fight for full equality" and that "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."