In July we told you that a fight Jason Jones has been waging for years had reached its final judges in London. On Tuesday, November 10, those judges answered. And the answer was unanimous.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Trinidad and Tobago’s court of last resort, ruled that the country’s laws criminalising consensual sex between adult men are unconstitutional.

The short version

  • The court: Five justices of the Privy Council: Lord Reed, Lord Sales, Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lady Rose (case page). Lord Sales and Lord Burrows wrote the judgment and the others agreed, the Jamaica Observer reported.
  • The laws: Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986. Section 13 covers “buggery”; section 16 covers other sex acts, with an exemption that only ever applied to a man and a woman.
  • The result: Jones’s appeal was allowed and the Attorney General’s cross-appeal dismissed, CNC3 reported.
  • What’s still pending: The exact final order. The judges will take written submissions before deciding how the two sections are modified.

What the judges actually said

The core of the ruling is short and blunt. According to Reuters, the court found the law unconstitutional for trying to “criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex,” and Lord Sales said: “Laws which seek to criminalise such activities cannot be justified.”

The judges described the right to private and family life as protecting “such a core part of human identity as one’s sexual orientation.” CNC3 reported that the Board saw the right to form an intimate and loving relationship as central to a person’s existence and identity, and rejected the idea that long-standing laws or colonial-era tradition could justify keeping these ones.

There was also a pointed line about evidence. The Attorney General argued the law reflected traditional, long-standing values. The court said that claim would need evidence, and noted: “No such evidence was put forward by the Attorney General.”

The savings clause, explained in one minute

This is the part lawyers across the Caribbean will be reading closely.

Many Caribbean constitutions include a “savings clause” that shields laws which existed before independence from being challenged under the new constitution’s rights. That’s how Trinidad and Tobago’s Court of Appeal reversed Jones’s 2018 High Court win in March 2025: it held the provisions were protected.

The Privy Council disagreed on two fronts, according to the Jamaica Observer and CNC3:

  • The 1986 Act is new law. It materially departed from the 1925 Ordinance it replaced, so it isn’t “existing law” protected by section 6 of the Constitution. The Law Lords called it “a fresh start in terms of the law on Sexual Offences.”
  • It isn’t reasonably justifiable. Under section 13 of the Constitution, the provisions failed because “the interference with the most intimate aspects of Mr Jones’s private life is too severe.”

The judges added that savings clauses “should be interpreted narrowly so as not to protect large areas of old law from constitutional scrutiny.” That sentence will travel.

Who is Jason Jones?

Jones, 62, was born in Trinidad and Tobago and now lives in Britain, the Gleaner reported. He won in the High Court in 2018, when then-judge Devindra Rampersad found the provisions unconstitutional, lost at the Court of Appeal in 2025, and took the case to London, where it was heard in July.

His reaction was joy with an asterisk. “They told LGBTQ+ people that we were criminals in our own country,” he said, per CNC3. “That message ends today.” He also told Reuters the judgment does not address wider “human rights and equality for LGBTQ+ people which have been denied using British colonial era laws” across the Commonwealth.

His lawyer, Anand Ramlogan SC, a former attorney general, called it a “landmark victory for gay rights, equal dignity and respect for private and family life in Trinidad and Tobago.” Ramlogan’s chambers said in a statement that “every person is entitled to the protection of the Constitution, regardless of their sexual orientation,” and noted the harassment, violence and fear of arrest Jones faced along the way, CNC3 reported.

The Attorney General’s office, which opposed the appeal, did not immediately respond to Reuters.

Why this matters beyond one country

Human Rights Watch says this is the first time the Privy Council has ruled on the constitutionality of laws like these. That matters because the same court is also the final appeal court for other independent Commonwealth countries and UK Overseas Territories.

HRW places the ruling in a run of Caribbean court victories, in Saint Lucia, Dominica, Barbados “and elsewhere.” Its senior LGBT rights researcher, Cristian González Cabrera, said the decision is “another powerful reminder that decriminalization is not a special privilege, but a universal human rights imperative.”

What happens next

The court’s provisional view is that the remedy from the 2018 High Court ruling, which modified the law to exempt consenting adults whatever their sexual orientation, should be adopted, CNC3 reported. The parties now file written submissions before the final order.

For LGBTQ+ Trinidadians, the most important change is the message. A law can do damage even when it’s rarely enforced: it gives stigma a legal spine. As of this week, the country’s highest court has said that spine was never constitutional.

We’ll update this story when the Privy Council issues its final order.