Jones: Fight for equality not over

Ja­son Jones says the fight for full equal­i­ty and hu­man rights for LGBTQ+ peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go is far from over, de­spite his land­mark vic­to­ry at the Privy Coun­cil which has de­crim­i­nalised con­sen­su­al same-sex in­ti­ma­cy.

Re­act­ing to Tues­day’s unan­i­mous rul­ing by all five judges of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil, Jones said the de­ci­sion end­ed the mes­sage that LGBTQ+ peo­ple were crim­i­nals in their own coun­try.

“Whilst I wel­come this judg­ment, it does not, how­ev­er, ad­dress the main is­sues of hu­man rights and equal­i­ty for LGBTQ+ peo­ple which have been de­nied us­ing British colo­nial era laws across the Com­mon­wealth and be­yond,” he 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.”

Jones said he was proud to have led the 11-year le­gal chal­lenge but in­sist­ed that more work was need­ed.

“Let this vic­to­ry be the ral­ly­ing call to ac­cel­er­ate the fight for full equal­i­ty and rights for all peo­ple, every­where,” he said.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that Sec­tions 13 and 16 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, which crim­i­nalised bug­gery and acts of se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy, were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al to the ex­tent that they crim­i­nalised con­sen­su­al sex­u­al con­duct be­tween adults.

The de­ci­sion over­turns the Court of Ap­peal’s March 2025 rul­ing that the pro­vi­sions were pro­tect­ed from con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion’s Sav­ings Clause.

Jones’ le­gal bat­tle be­gan in 2015, with an ini­tial vic­to­ry in the High Court in 2018. How­ev­er, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ap­pealed, and the Court of Ap­peal sub­se­quent­ly re­versed that de­ci­sion.

The fi­nal ap­peal was heard in Lon­don on Ju­ly 8, 2026.

In its unan­i­mous judg­ment, the Board said: “The abil­i­ty to form a deep con­nec­tion with an­oth­er per­son through an in­ti­mate and lov­ing re­la­tion­ship is a vi­tal in­ter­est for all hu­man be­ings.”