Challenge to Trinidad anti-gay law heads toward climactic ruling
Trinidad case ‘can decriminalize millions of people across the Commonwealth’.
British/Trinidadian LGBTQ rights activist Jason Jones has taken a step forward in his challenge to the Trinidadian law banning gay sex.
That law had been overturned by Trinidad’s High Court in 2018, but that ruling was struck down in March by the nation’s Court of Appeal.
Jones has now been granted permission to appeal to the London-based Privy Council, which serves as the Supreme Court for many former British colonies.
The Daily Express of Trinidad reported this week:
In a recent post to social media, Jones said he has three months to put together his appeal and “get things in place for a hearing at the Privy Council some time next year”. …
Jones, a gay man born in Trinidad and Tobago but living in the United Kingdom, had added, “Let me be clear, for our Appeal Court judges to overturn one of the most progressive human rights judgements in recent history is nothing short of diabolical.”
In his most recent post announcing that leave was granted for him to appeal to the Privy Council, Jones called for his crowdfunding campaign to be shared and added that, “I cannot do this work without your support! This case can decriminalise millions of people across the Commonwealth!”
LGBTQ rights journalist Rob Salerno, an editor for Erasing 76 Crimes, analyzed the situation in his LGBTQ Global newsletter. (Click here to subscribe.)
As a reminder, the high court decriminalized sodomy in 2018, but in March of this year, the court of appeal reversed the decision on quite shaky grounds. It’s genuinely unclear how the Privy Council will rule here – they’ve in the past been unsympathetic to LGBT rights and upheld “savings clauses” that protect pre-independence unconstitutional laws in Caribbean territories (as in upholding bans on same-sex marriage in Bermuda and Cayman Islands). But it’s a stretch to say that the sodomy law is protected by the savings clause because it’s not the same law that existed at independence – parliament repealed and replaced it with a different law. Additionally, international law has clearly established an obligation to decriminalize gay sex.
Whatever the outcome, it’s likely to impact other sodomy law challenges in former UK colonies with “savings clauses,” like Jamaica. Jones is expecting the case to be heard at some point next year, and a final decision could likely take another year after that.
