British appellate court strikes down Trinidad and Tobago sodomy law

A British appellate court on Tuesday struck down a Trinidad and Tobago law that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.

Jason Jones, an LGBTQ+ activist from Trinidad and Tobago who currently lives in the U.K., in 2017 challenged Sections 13 and 16 of the country’s Sexual Offenses Act.

High Court Justice Devindra Rampersad in 2018 found them unconstitutional. The country’s government appealed the ruling, and the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal in 2025 overturned it in a 2-1 ruling.

Jones appealed the decision to the Privy Council, an appellate court for British territories that can also consider cases from Commonwealth countries. (King Charles III is not Trinidad and Tobago’s head of state, but the country remains part of the Commonwealth.) The Privy Council heard the case in July.

The Los Angeles Blade has reached out to Jones for comment.

Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and Dominica are among the countries that have decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in recent years. (All four Caribbean nations are former British colonies.)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2021 issued a decision that said Jamaica must repeal its colonial-era sodomy law. The Jamaican Supreme Court in 2023 ruled against a gay man who challenged it.

A judge on St. Vincent and the Grenadines’s top court in 2024 dismissed two cases that challenged the country’s sodomy laws.