Anti-homosexuality laws in Trinidad and Tobago overturned
Summary
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council unanimously overturned laws in Trinidad and Tobago that criminalised consensual same-sex intimacy. The ruling followed an 11-year legal challenge by Jason Jones and found the laws incompatible with the right to respect for private and family life.Key Facts
- The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is Trinidad and Tobago’s final court of appeal.
- Jason Jones, a dual citizen, began the legal challenge 11 years ago.
- Jones won in Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court in 2018, but the government appealed successfully.
- The government argued that savings law clauses protected the laws from legal challenge.
- Jones’s lawyers argued that changes made to the laws in 1986 removed that protection.
- Lord Sales said the laws could not be justified in a society that respects individual rights and freedoms.
- The article says Trinidad and Tobago had been among about 34 Commonwealth countries that criminalised homosexuality under laws originating in the British colonial era.
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