PRIVY COUNCIL RULES AGAINST TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO’s ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY LAWS

A ruling by the United Kingdom’s Privy Council has overturned a national law in Trinidad and Tobago that had outlawed same-sex relationships.

In the ruling delivered this week, the Privy Council - which is the final appellate court of the twin-island independent Caribbean state and former British colony - said the country’s anti-same-sex laws violated a person’s “fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life.”

The ruling effectively renders the country’s anti-homosexuality laws unconstitutional.

The case stems from a challenge brought by dual Trinidad & Tobago and British national Jason Jones against the twin-island state’s Sexual Offences Act after the local court had overturned a previous ruling in his favour.

Following his initial victory in the local courts, the Trinidad and Tobago government appealed and won in the country’s national court of appeal. Jones then referred the matter to the UK’s Privy Council.

His successful and final outcome at the UK Court of Appeal is all the more significant for both the LGQT movement in Trinidad and Tobago as well as for the country’s constitution.

Trinidad and Tobago, which became independent in 1962, has retained the British Privy Council as its final court of appeal. Despite being the headquarters of the Caribbean Court of Justice(CCJ), the country is one of several English-speaking Caribbean states which do not recognise the CCJ as their final appellate court, choosing instead to remain with the British Privy Council.

In a report on the historic development, the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) said: “Campaigners hope it will spark similar successful legal challenges elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Prior to this historic decision, Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries continuing to criminalise homosexuality based on colonial-era British laws. Under these laws, consensual same-sex intimacy is punishable by imprisonment, and in some cases carries the death penalty.”

It remains to be seen how the wider ramifications of various aspects of the law regarding same-sex relationships will now play out in Trinidad and Tobago.