Under the 1925 law that Trinidad and Tobago kept when it became a republic, buggery carried up to five years in prison. By 2012, after two rounds of legislation, the maximum was 25 years.
On November 10, 2026, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, the country's final court of appeal, ruled unanimously that sections 13 and 16 of Trinidad and Tobago's Sexual Offences Act 1986 violate the constitutional right to private and family life and cannot be used to criminalize private, consensual sex between adults of the same sex. The case was brought by activist Jason Jones in 2017.
The judgment, [2026] UKPC 38, was written by Lord Sales and Lord Burrows. Lord Reed, Lord Briggs and Lady Rose agreed. It allows Jones's appeal and dismisses a cross-appeal by the attorney general.
What the judgment actually orders
Several reports described the laws as struck down. The judgment is more precise than that. Its conclusion says the two sections "must be interpreted subject to the Constitution so as to make it clear that they do not apply to criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex."
The exact wording of the court's order is not settled. Jones's lawyer, Anand Ramlogan SC, asked the Board to delete both sections outright. The Board said that may not be open to him, since Jones never appealed the trial judge's remedy, but it agreed to take written submissions. Its "provisional view," set out in paragraph 89, is that the 2018 remedy written by Justice Rampersad of the High Court should stand. That order rewrote section 13 so that buggery is a crime only "without consent" and set the maximum for both sections at five years.
The Board added a point aimed at the government. "It is for the legislature not the judiciary to consolidate or revise the statute book," it wrote, if offenses such as buggery and rape now overlap.
Why the savings clause failed
Section 6 of Trinidad and Tobago's 1976 Constitution protects "existing law," meaning laws in force before the Constitution took effect, from challenges under its bill of rights. Courts across the Caribbean have used savings clauses like it to keep colonial laws in place.
The government's case depended on it. The Court of Appeal had agreed in part on March 25, 2025, when a majority held that the 1986 sections were essentially a re-enactment of the 1925 offenses. It restored the old five-year cap and the old gross indecency provision in their place.
The Privy Council rejected that reading. "The correct categorisation of the 1986 Act is that it is new law enacted after the Constitution came into force," the press summary quotes the Board as saying at paragraph 51. Parliament had passed a full new sexual offenses regime, under a long title promising "to repeal and replace" the old laws. New law gets no shield.
That left the government arguing that the sections were "reasonably justifiable" because they were traditional. The Board called that case "very weak" and said the attorney general had offered no evidence. "The mere fact that a repressive law has survived from colonial times so as to be 'traditional' in that sense plainly could not furnish a legitimate objective," Lord Sales and Lord Burrows wrote.
Our penalty history, from the judgment's own statutory record
The judgment sets out every version of the law since 1925 in its paragraphs 11 to 22. We pulled the maximum penalties into one sequence.
1925, Offences Against the Person Act: buggery, five years. Gross indecency between men, in public or private, two years.
1979 amendment: buggery with a person under 14, up to life.
1980 amendment: the sections are renumbered and "Sodomy" is renamed "Buggery," with no change to the penalties.
1986, Sexual Offences Act: buggery by an adult on another adult, 10 years. By an adult on a minor, life. By a minor, five years. A new offense of "serious indecency" replaces gross indecency and covers women as well as men, with five years where the other person is 16 or older.
2012, Children Act: the maximum for buggery becomes 25 years in all cases.
2018, Rampersad's remedy: consent added to the definition of buggery and five years substituted.
2025, Court of Appeal majority: the 25-year term struck and five years put back, with the 1925 gross indecency section reinstated in place of section 16 for consenting adults.
By our count, the maximum adult penalty for consensual buggery rose fivefold between 1925 and 2012, from five years to 25. Before the Board, the attorney general did not try to defend the provisions to the extent they went further than the 1925 law, according to paragraph 70.
How long did the case take?
Our timeline from the dates in the judgment, counting from the day Jones filed.
February 23, 2017: Jones files his claim in the High Court in Port of Spain, Claim No CV2017-00720. Day 0.
April 12, 2018: Rampersad rules the sections unconstitutional, day 413.
September 20, 2018: Rampersad sets the remedy, day 574.
March 25, 2025: The Court of Appeal allows the government's appeal in part, by a two to one majority, with Justice Kokaram dissenting, day 2,952. That decision came 2,378 days after the remedy ruling.
July 8, 2026: The Privy Council hears the appeal in London, day 3,422.
November 10, 2026: Judgment, day 3,547, and 125 days after the hearing.
Jones, born in Port of Spain in 1964, has been openly gay since 16 and moved to England in 1996 after harassment and discrimination, the judgment says.
Who was on each side
The respondents were the attorney general, the Equal Opportunity Commission and the Trinidad and Tobago Council of Evangelical Churches, according to the case page. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, the country's largest Hindu organization, also opposed Jones, the Associated Press reported. Five groups intervened in writing on Jones's side, including OutBermuda and the United Belize Advocacy Movement, represented with help from the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School.
The AP reported that the laws have not been enforced in recent history. It listed Grenada, Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as Caribbean countries that still have such laws, while courts in Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda have struck down similar ones.
The case turned on the right to private life, the same right at issue in a very different English privacy fight this fall, our story on the anonymous celebrity injunction in the "PPT" case. In the United States, the Supreme Court sent a transgender detainee's case back to a lower court on November 9, as we reported in our story on the Roybal v. Griffith order.
What to watch
The Board will issue directions for written submissions from Ramlogan and from Peter Knox KC, for the attorney general, on the final wording of the order. Until that order is made, the provisional view in paragraph 89 is the best guide to how sections 13 and 16 will read. Parliament in Port of Spain could also act on its own to rewrite the statute, which the Board said is its job.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
