Trinidad Gay Sex Law Struck Down by Privy Council

Trinidad and Tobago's colonial-era ban on gay sex cannot be enforced against consenting adults, after the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled unanimously in London on 10 November. All five judges sided with activist Jason Jones, who has spent a decade challenging sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986.

The judgment says the provisions "must be interpreted subject to the Constitution so as to make it clear that they do not apply to criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex." It is the first time the Privy Council, Trinidad and Tobago's final court of appeal, has decided a case on decriminalising same-sex intimacy, according to the BBC.

A ten-year fight that ended in London

Jones, 62, was born in Trinidad and now lives in Britain. He began the case after the High Court and then a divided Court of Appeal refused to strike the laws down: in March 2025, the Court of Appeal ruled 2-1 that the constitution's savings clause protected the colonial-era version of the offence, though it cut the maximum penalty for buggery from 25 years to five. Justice of Appeal Vasheist Kokaram dissented.

The Privy Council heard arguments on 8 July 2026. The panel was Lord Sales, Lord Reed, Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lady Rose. The state's lawyer, Peter Knox KC, argued that the 1986 act simply re-enacted older provisions with modifications, which would have brought it inside the savings clause.

"These laws never reflected who we are as a people and a nation: diverse, multiracial, and secular," Jones said after the ruling, according to the Trinidad Guardian. "They told LGBTQ+ people that we were criminals in our own country. That message ends today."

Why the savings clause didn't save the law

The case turned on a technical question with enormous consequences. Trinidad and Tobago's 1976 constitution shields laws already on the books at independence from later rights challenges. The state argued the 1986 Sexual Offences Act inherited that protection because it traced the old buggery offence into a new statute.

The judges rejected that reasoning, calling the state's case "very weak." They noted the 1986 act created "a new and comprehensive regime," so it does not inherit savings-clause cover. They also dismissed the argument that the provisions were justified simply because they were traditional, writing that "the mere fact that a repressive law has survived from colonial times so as to be 'traditional' in that sense plainly could not furnish a legitimate objective."

Lord Sales, announcing the decision, put it more simply: "Laws which seek to criminalise such activities cannot be justified," he said, according to Reuters.

What changes for gay men in Trinidad and Tobago

The court's provisional view is that the 2018 order of High Court Justice Devindra Rampersad should stand. That order rewrote section 13 so that buggery means sex without consent, and amended section 16 in the same spirit, making clear there is no criminality where the parties are consenting adults.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. There is no final order yet: the judges have asked for written submissions before sealing the terms. And the court said any wider cleanup of the statute book is a job for the legislature, not the judiciary.

• Private, consensual sex between adult men can no longer be prosecuted under sections 13 and 16.
• The 2018 High Court order is expected to be restored, with the offences narrowed to non-consensual acts.
• Parliament is the only body that can repeal the sections outright, the judges said.
• No further appeal is available in Trinidad and Tobago; the Privy Council is the end of the line.

What happens next

The parties must file written submissions on the final order, after which the Privy Council will issue its formal terms. Jones's lawyer, former attorney general Anand Ramlogan SC, has asked the court to delete both sections entirely rather than narrow them; the judges said that may not be open to him because Jones never appealed Rampersad's order, but they will let him try.

Ramlogan called the ruling a "landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago," according to the BBC. For a country where the state had defended the law for a decade, the practical effect is that police and prosecutors lose the basis for charging adults who have sex in private.

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Sources: Gayety, 13 November 2026; Trinidad Guardian, November 2026; BBC and Reuters reporting cited by Gayety, 10-13 November 2026.