A gay man has won a historic 10-year battle against Trinidad and Tobago’s homophobic laws with a landmark UK appeals court ruling that could help overturn similar anti-gay laws in other Caribbean countries.
The privy council, based in London, overturned a 2025 decision by Trinidad and Tobago’s court of appeal that recriminalised consensual anal sex, seven years after the Trinidadian activist Jason Jones secured a high court judgment declaring the country’s colonial-era “buggery” laws unconstitutional.
Delivering the ruling, the privy council judge Lord Sales said: “The ability to form a deep connection with another person through an intimate and loving relationship is a vital interest for all human beings.”
The privy council is the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago and several other Commonwealth countries, giving the ruling potentially far-reaching significance for other Caribbean jurisdictions where similar laws remain in force.
“This judgment will have a domino effect across every country that has the privy council as its supreme court. It will change many millions of people’s lives,” Jones said in a statement.
“I’m looking forward to going home, switching off everything and living with this moment for a while.”
In an interview after Tuesday’s hearing, he added: “We may not see the benefits of this for 50 years. What a judgment says in a courtroom and what happens in your home and workplace are two entirely different things.
“I don’t focus on changing hearts and minds. I have done this for my community, for our hearts and minds, so that we can stand proudly and at least say we are not criminals.”
The LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell, who was also at the courthouse, said: “There will certainly be LGBT people and human rights defenders in at least a dozen countries who will now use this privy council judgment to push for decriminalisation in their home countries. It sets an absolute gold standard for decriminalisation.”
Jones’s lawyer, Caroline Edwards, hailed Tuesday’s unanimous victory as “an emphatic victory for Jason, for all gay men and women in Trinidad and Tobago and for all people who believe in the fundamental rights of everyone”.
Reflecting on the case’s long journey, she said: “All judges who heard the case in Trinidad and Tobago were unanimous that the 1986 legislation was not justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for rights and freedoms, and all the privy council judges agreed.”
Jones has been fighting the “buggery law”, introduced in 1925 under British colonial rule, since 2016, arguing that it violated his constitutional rights. His case hinged on whether the provisions criminalising consensual anal sex were protected by the “savings clause”, which shields certain older laws inherited from the UK at independence from being struck down as unconstitutional.
In a historic 2018 victory, the high court judge Devindra Rampersad ruled that the provisions criminalising consensual anal sex were unconstitutional. But the government appealed and last year won a ruling reversing that decision after the court of appeal found the provisions were protected by the savings clause.
Tuesday’s privy council decision backed Rampersad’s original ruling, with all five judges finding that parliament’s 1986 Sexual Offences Act amounted to new legislation rather than merely a continuation of colonial-era laws and therefore could not be protected from constitutional challenge by the savings clause.
The privy council also upheld Rampersad’s remedy that makes anal sex legal between consenting adults of any gender over the age of 16. It also decriminalises same-sex intimacy, referred to in the archaic 1925 act as “gross indecency”.
Jones’s court case is the latest significant victory for LGBTQ+ rights in the Caribbean. It follows a landmark ruling in St Lucia last year, when the Eastern Caribbean supreme court struck down colonial-era laws criminalising consensual gay sex.
Jeshua Bardoo, a lawyer and founder of Equal Rights, Access and Opportunities St Vincent and the Grenadines, described Tuesday’s decision as a “historic moment for LGBTQ+ rights”.
“Unfortunately, in my country, SVG, a high court judge upheld these laws as constitutional in 2024. I believe that this decision will be very persuasive to the case currently under way or future litigation in SVG, as privy council decisions are usually binding on lower courts,” he said.
Joel Simpson, the founder of the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination, a Guyanese LGBTQ rights organisation, described the ruling as a “monumental victory for LGBTQIA+ people in Trinidad and Tobago and across the Caribbean”.
“This ruling is another powerful sign of the growing momentum across the Caribbean to leave behind outdated colonial-era laws that criminalise people simply because of who they are and who they love,” he said.
Téa Braun, the chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust, said there was hope the case signalled a continuing regional trend of tackling “antiquated laws” that “violate the human rights of LGBTQ+ people”.
“This issue continues to be litigated in domestic courts across the region, and we hope the trend – which began with a judgment in Belize in 2016 and was followed by Antigua, Barbados, St Kitts, Dominica and St Lucia – will continue,” she said.
In Trinidad and Tobago, Pride TT welcomed the ruling as a “significant moment in Trinidad and Tobago’s journey towards equality”, but said it did not mean the struggle for LGBTQ+ people was over.
“We must acknowledge that the removal of these discriminatory provisions does not mean that all the challenges facing LGBTQIA+ people have suddenly disappeared,” it said.
“Discrimination, stigma, exclusion and unequal treatment remain realities in many aspects of everyday life, including employment, education, housing, healthcare and access to public services.”
Asked whether this would make Jones, who has lived in London for several decades, feel comfortable living in Trinidad again, he said no. “The thing about liberation movements is every time you move the needle forward, you get the pushback. I got a lot of pushback from the queer community [in Trinidad], saying: ‘Don’t stir the pot.’ But you have to. I’m not afraid of pushback.”
