Privy Council strikes down Trinidad and Tobago's gay sex laws

Trinidad and Tobago can no longer criminalise private, consensual sex between adults of the same sex. On Tuesday 10 November 2026 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, the country's final court of appeal, unanimously allowed an appeal by gay rights activist Jason Jones and dismissed a cross-appeal by the Attorney General. The five justices held that sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986, which criminalise "buggery" and "serious indecency", infringe the constitutional right to respect for private and family life and must be read so that they do not apply to consenting adults in private.

The judgment, cited as [2026] UKPC 38, ends a legal fight that began when Jones filed his claim in February 2017. It is the first time the Privy Council has ruled on the constitutionality of laws criminalising consensual same-sex conduct, according to Human Rights Watch, and lawyers and activists across the Caribbean expect it to be cited in pending cases elsewhere in the region.

What did the Privy Council decide?

The panel of Lord Reed, Lord Sales, Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lady Rose answered two main questions, in a judgment written by Lord Sales and Lord Burrows.

The first was whether the 1986 provisions were protected by the "savings clause" in section 6 of Trinidad and Tobago's 1976 Constitution. That clause shields "existing law", meaning laws already in force when the republican constitution took effect, from being struck down for breaching fundamental rights. Trinidad and Tobago's Court of Appeal had ruled by a majority in March 2025 that the 1986 Act merely re-enacted older offences from the Offences Against the Person Act 1925, a law passed under British colonial rule, and so was partly protected.

The Privy Council disagreed. It found that the 1986 Act "repealed and replaced" the colonial-era offences rather than re-enacting them with modifications, and therefore was not saved existing law. In the board's words, the majority of the Court of Appeal "was mistaken in law" on that point. The Trinidad Guardian reported the board describing the 1986 Act as "intended to be a fresh start in terms of the law on Sexual Offences".

The second question, raised by the Attorney General's cross-appeal, was whether the laws survived anyway because Parliament passed the 1986 Act using the special majority allowed by section 13 of the Constitution. That route protects a law only if it is "reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual". Every judge who had heard the case in Trinidad and Tobago found that the provisions failed that test, and the Privy Council agreed.

Why did the court reject the government's arguments?

The board said the Attorney General's case for keeping the provisions "was very weak". The government's counsel argued that they simply reflected "traditional laws of long standing". The justices replied that the mere survival of a repressive law from colonial times could not justify it, noting that many such laws reflected "the values of the United Kingdom from long ago, rather than values derived from local society".

The board left open the possibility that a law reflecting genuine, widely held social traditions could serve a legitimate purpose, but said that would require evidence. The Attorney General had produced none. The board also found Jones's evidence of almost daily harassment and abuse in Trinidad, which the state did not challenge, relevant to the harm the laws caused.

The justices relied in part on the European Court of Human Rights' 1981 decision in Dudgeon v United Kingdom, which found Northern Ireland's similar laws breached the right to private life, and on later Caribbean rulings from Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and other jurisdictions. "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 judgment says.

Who is Jason Jones and how did the case reach London?

Jones was born in 1964 and raised in Port of Spain. According to the judgment, he has been openly gay since he was 16, moved to England in 1996 after harassment and discrimination, lived in Trinidad again from 2010 to 2014 and has visited regularly since.

In April 2018, High Court judge Devindra Rampersad ruled that sections 13 and 16 were unconstitutional to the extent that they criminalised consensual sex between adults. In a September 2018 remedy judgment he rewrote the provisions so that buggery is an offence only without consent, and widened the private-conduct exemption to serious indecency. The government appealed. In March 2025 the Court of Appeal, by two judges to one, reinstated a version of the older offences under the savings clause, while agreeing the 1986 provisions were not reasonably justifiable. Jones then took the case to the Privy Council, which heard it on 8 July 2026.

The Attorney General, the Equal Opportunity Commission and the Trinidad and Tobago Council of Evangelical Churches were respondents. DW reported that the country's largest Hindu organisation, the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, also contested the case in the lower courts. Five LGBTQ+ advocacy groups from Bermuda, Belize, the wider Caribbean and North America intervened in support of Jones.

Is the ruling final, and what still has to be settled?

Yes on the main question. The Privy Council is the highest court for Trinidad and Tobago, so there is no further appeal against its finding that the provisions cannot criminalise consenting adults in private.