Highest Appeal Court Strikes Down Trinidad and Tobago’s Same-Sex Criminalization Laws

Jones challenged Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986, which criminalize private, consensual same-sex sexual relations via the offenses of buggery and serious indecency. The London-based Privy Council, the final appellate court for Trinidad and Tobago and most of the former British colonies in the Caribbean, ruled in Jones’ favor. It found that these provisions infringe upon his fundamental rights, particularly the right to private and family life, and that provisions must not be used as a basis to prosecute private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex.

This outcome is the culmination of a long fight for justice. Jones first filed his constitutional challenge in 2017, and in 2018, the High Court ruled in his favor, finding the buggery and serious indecency laws were unconstitutional and of no effect to the extent that they criminalized consensual sexual conduct between adults. In 2025, the Court of Appeal reversed the High Court’s ruling and reinstated pre-independence sodomy laws dating to 1925 that carried lesser penalties. 

At the heart of this appeal before the Privy Council was whether Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act were “existing laws” falling within the scope of the “savings law clause” in section 6 of Trinidad and Tobago’s Constitution, thereby attracting immunity from constitutional challenge. Savings law clauses serve as a stranglehold on human rights protection in the Caribbean as they immunize colonial-era laws that infringe fundamental human rights from being struck down by the courts. 

The Privy Council found that Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act were entirely new laws – they went beyond repealing and re-enacting, with modifications, the laws in the Offences Against the Person Act 1925. Consequently, they could not be considered existing laws and therefore did not fall within the scope of the savings law clause. They were also not reasonably justifiable in a society that properly respects the rights and freedoms of the individual. 

The Privy Council’s judgment is a positive development for the region. Four Caribbean countries - Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines – retain laws criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct, and all but Guyana have the Privy Council as their final appellate court. By highlighting that “social attitudes to homosexuality and homosexual relationships have developed in favour of acceptance and non-criminalisation in liberal democracies,” by underscoring the centrality of the dignity of the human person and the right to private and family life, and by emphasizing that “ability to form a deep connection with another person through an intimate and loving relationship is a vital interest for all human beings,” the judgment makes it clear that the criminalization of same-sex sexual relations undermines the central values protected by Caribbean constitutions. These discriminatory laws have no place in our societies.