A ruling by a British-based court has invalidated laws criminalizing homosexuality in Trinidad and Tobago, setting a precedent for those challenging similar laws in other nations in the Caribbean and possibly beyond.
The ruling was handed down on Tuesday by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which serves as the highest court of appeal for dozens of crown dependencies, overseas territories and former British colonies.
Five British judges unanimously upheld a 2018 decision by a lower court in Trinidad that had found two sections of the Caribbean country’s 1986 law targeting private, consensual same-sex relations to be unconstitutional. An appeals court in Trinidad had reversed the lower-court decision in 2025.
Trinidad’s attorney general had argued that the law preserved traditional family values in the country, and had leaned on a legal mechanism called “savings provisions,” which kept many laws from the British colonial era.
The decision delivered a hard-fought victory to advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Trinidad. Jason Jones, an L.G.B.T.Q. activist who had been a key plaintiff against the law since 2015, called the ruling a “vindication.” He said it would provide hope to young L.G.B.T.Q. people in his country who are living in fear of legal and societal discrimination.
Still, Mr. Jones noted ruefully, to challenge the colonial-era law, his lawyers had to seek intervention from a court based in Britain — decades after Trinidad gained independence, in 1962.
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Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt