He initially won his case at Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court in 2018, but that \u200bruling was overturned, prompting Mr Jones to \u200bgo to London’s Privy Council, the final court of \u200cappeal \u2060for Trinidad and Tobago.<\/p>\n
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The Privy Council ruled that Trinidad and Tobago’s law was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones, who now lives in Britain, welcomed the ruling but he added it did not address wider issues of “human rights and equality for LGBTQ+ people which have \u200cbeen denied using British colonial era laws across the Commonwealth and beyond”.<\/p>\n
The ruling brought to a close an almost 10-year battle for gay rights in the twin-island Commonwealth nation and cannot be appealed.<\/p>\n
Judge Philip \u200bSales said \u200bas he \u2060announced the court’s ruling that “the current understanding of the fundamental \u200bindividual right to respect for private \u200band \u2060family life is that it protects such a core part of human identity as \u2060one’s \u200bsexual orientation”.<\/p>\n
“Laws which seek \u200bto criminalise such activities cannot be justified,” the judge added.<\/p>\n
The case was filed in February 2017 by Mr Jones, who has fought for gay rights in Trinidad and Tobago for nearly a decade, and has wound its way through several courts.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones left Trinidad and Tobago in 1996 because of what he described as homophobic violence and discrimination.<\/p>\n
In April 2018, Trinidad’s High Court found the laws unconstitutional, but a local appeals court partially reversed the ruling in March 2025.<\/p>\n
Four months later, Trinidad’s Court of Appeals allowed Mr Jones to seek a ruling from the final court of appeals in England.<\/p>\n
The case has been closely watched by activists across the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
Trinidad and Tobago is an independent country but also a republic within the British Commonwealth, so the Privy Council is its final court of appeals.<\/p>\n
The nation has pushed for the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice to replace the Privy Council.<\/p>\n
In 1991, the Bahamas decriminalised homosexuality, while the UK government repealed such laws in 2001 in Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the Caribbean, judges have recently struck down similar laws in Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.<\/p>\n
Gay sex remains a crime in Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and St. Vincent and the Grenadines – all former British colonies.<\/p>\n
Source: \u00a0![\"Sky](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sky-news-logo-1.png\"){kind=logo}
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