Court seizes on a new way to delay challenge to Jamaica’s anti-gay law
Nine anti-gay groups won a procedural victory delaying court action for years.
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“J’can Court of Appeal strikes down LGBT human rights AGAIN” was how LGBT rights activist Maurice Tomlinson described the news.
Tomlinson’s longstanding challenge to Jamaica’s anti-sodomy law “has been put on ice”, in the words of the Jamaica Observer.
Tomlinson explains:
Recently [on March 31], the Court of Appeal again struck a blow against the human rights of Jamaica LGBT people when it overturned a lower court decision and ordered that my long-delayed challenge to the Jamaican anti-sodomy law must now be split into two cases.
The first case will decide if the anti-sodomy law is entrenched in our constitution and so no court can strike it down. And, if the law is ruled not to be entrenched, then the second case will decide what rights, if any, are violated by this archaic colonial edict, as well as the remedy for these violations.
This decision of the Court of Appeal [the highest court in Jamaica] is a victory for the government as well as the nine right-wing Christian groups that have been granted full standing in the case. They want to delay the hearing of this matter for as long as possible, perhaps hoping that the sort of reactionary stuff we see coming out of the US, Uganda, Hungary and elsewhere will reverse the global gains for LGBT human rights.
In its article about the court ruling, the Jamaica Observer explained the background of the case:
Tomlinson, in 2015, filed a claim … challenging the constitutionality of sections 76, 77, and 79 of the OAPA [Offences Against the Person Act], contending that criminalising homosexuality amounts to breaches of the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of Jamaica, while further alienating and driving members of the LGBTQ community underground. He is being opposed by the Government and 10 church groups.
Tomlinson is seeking to have the court declare that sections 76 and 77 of the OAPA do not apply to consensual sexual activities between any person age 16 or older, including people of the same sex. He is also seeking a similar declaration in respect of the treatment of those acts under the 2009 Sexual Offences Act, as well as the requirements for registration of such sex offenders and the reporting obligations under that statute.
