Privy Council to hear challenge to Trinidad and Tobago’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws
LGBTQ+ activist Jason Jones is appealing a Court of Appeal ruling that reinstated parts of the country's Sexual Offences Act
By Callum Wells
The Privy Council will hear a challenge to laws criminalising same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago this July.
LGBTQ+ activist Jason Jones is appealing a Court of Appeal ruling that reinstated laws criminalising consensual sexual activity between men after they had previously been struck down by the High Court.
A hearing before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Trinidad and Tobago’s highest court of appeal, is scheduled for 8 July in London. The Privy Council, based within the UK’s Supreme Court, remains the country’s final court of appeal.
What do Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act criminalise?
Jones first launched legal proceedings in 2017, arguing that Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act breached constitutional rights including privacy, freedom of expression and equality before the law.
Section 13 prohibited “buggery” and carried a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, while Section 16 outlawed “serious indecency” and carried a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. The latter provision also applied to women.
In 2018, the High Court ruled in Jones’ favour, finding that the sections were unconstitutional insofar as they criminalised consensual sexual activity between adults of the same sex.
That judgment was overturned in March 2025 when Trinidad and Tobago’s Court of Appeal found the provisions were protected by the Constitution’s savings law clause. The clause prevents certain laws that pre-date independence from being challenged on constitutional grounds.
Why could the Privy Council ruling have implications across the Commonwealth?
As a result, consensual same-sex intimacy between men became a criminal offence once again in Trinidad and Tobago.
Judges at the Privy Council are expected to consider whether the legislation should continue to be shielded from constitutional review. Campaigners are also watching the case closely because several Commonwealth countries retain similar laws dating back to British colonial rule.
Earlier this month, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy hosted a parliamentary reception in Westminster on Commonwealth homosexuality decriminalisation on behalf of Jones ahead of the hearing.
Who is LGBTQ+ activist Jason Jones?
Jones has been involved in LGBTQ+ activism for more than 30 years. In 1992, he co-founded The Lambda Group, regarded as the first LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation in the southern Caribbean.
He also served on the board of Rainbow Migration, then known as the Stonewall Immigration Group, which successfully campaigned for overseas partners of LGBTQ+ British citizens to gain the right of abode in the UK in 1997.
His 2018 High Court victory has since been cited in legal arguments connected to the decriminalisation of same-sex relations in India.