Key facts
- The Privy Council ruled unanimously in favor of Jason Jones, who brought the challenge.
- Jones won in Trinidad's High Court in 2018, but the government's appeal overturned that ruling.
- The Attorney General had argued savings law clauses protected the legislation from challenge.
- The report said Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries criminalizing homosexuality.
London's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago, overturned laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy in the Caribbean island nation, according to a BBC News report published November 10, 2026. The court ruled the laws were not in keeping with the "fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life."
The judgment followed an 11-year legal battle brought by Jason Jones, 62, a dual citizen. Jones had successfully challenged the laws in Trinidad's High Court in 2018, but the Trinidadian government appealed and the ruling was overturned. The Privy Council's judicial committee found unanimously in favor of Jones.
Handing down the judgment, Lord Sales told the court the laws "cannot be regarded as reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of an individual." Jones said: "These laws never reflected who we are as a people and a nation - diverse, multiracial, and secular. They told LGBTQ+ people that we were criminals in our own country. That message ends today." Lawyer Anand Ramlogan SC, representing Jones, called the judgment a "landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago."
The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago had argued the law was protected from legal challenges by "savings law clauses" that carried over existing British laws into newly independent states. Representatives for Jones argued the laws violated an individual's right to privacy and that the government's 1986 changes, which introduced stricter punishments, meant the savings clause protections no longer applied.
The report said it is the first time the Privy Council has decided a case to decriminalize same-sex intimacy, and campaigners hope it will lead to similar legal challenges elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Before the ruling, Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries that continued to criminalize homosexuality under colonial-era British laws, the report said.