LONDON — Trinidad and Tobago's law criminalising consensual sexual relations between male same-sex couples was overturned by a London court on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, after a legal challenge by a gay man who said the law breached his human rights, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters, Nov 10, 2026
Jason Jones challenged the Caribbean nation's Sexual Offences Act — which made 'buggery' and 'gross indecency' illegal — as breaching his fundamental rights under the country's constitution. London's Privy Council, the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago and some other Commonwealth countries, ruled in Jones's favour, saying it was unconstitutional for the law to 'criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex'.
Source: Reuters, Nov 10, 2026
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled unanimously, the BBC reported, finding the laws were not in keeping with 'the fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life'. All five judges ruled that sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 must be read consistently with the constitution, so they no longer criminalise private, consensual sex between adults of the same sex.
Source: BBC News, Nov 10, 2026 (via BBC report summaries)
What the judges said
Handing down the judgment, Lord Sales said 'the current understanding of the fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life is that it protects such a core part of human identity as one's sexual orientation'. 'Laws which seek to criminalise such activities cannot be justified,' Sales added, saying the laws 'cannot be regarded as reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of an individual'.
Source: Reuters / BBC News, Nov 10, 2026
Jones, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and now lives in Britain, welcomed the ruling but added that it did not address wider 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 he hoped the decision would 'accelerate the fight for full equality'. The office of Trinidad and Tobago's Attorney General, which opposed Jones's appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters / BBC News, Nov 10, 2026
A case that went up, down, and up again
Jones first challenged the laws 11 years ago. He won in Trinidad and Tobago's High Court in 2018, but the government appealed and the Court of Appeal overturned that victory in 2025, reinstating the criminal provisions. The government's case rested in part on 'savings law' clauses said to protect the old laws from constitutional challenge; Jones's lawyers argued that changes made to the laws in 1986 had removed that protection. The Privy Council's ruling restores the effect of his 2018 victory — this time at the final court, from which there is no further appeal.
Source: BBC News, Nov 10, 2026
The law Jones struck down traces back to England's 'Buggery Act' of the 1500s, applied in Trinidad and Tobago through colonial-era legislation. Before Tuesday, Trinidad and Tobago was one of about 34 Commonwealth countries still criminalising homosexuality on that colonial basis. Campaigners say this is the first time the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has ever decided a case to decriminalise same-sex intimacy, and they hope it opens the way to similar challenges in other Caribbean and Commonwealth countries that still use the Privy Council as their final court.
Source: BBC News / CNN (via Greater Belize), Nov 10, 2026
What is solid
- The Privy Council ruled unanimously on Tuesday, November 10, 2026 that Trinidad and Tobago's law criminalising private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex is unconstitutional (Reuters and BBC).
- The case was brought by Jason Jones, born in Trinidad and Tobago and now living in Britain, who won in the High Court in 2018 and lost on appeal in 2025 before winning at the final court (Reuters and BBC).
- The Attorney General's office, which opposed the appeal, had not commented immediately after the ruling (Reuters).
What is only claimed
- The ruling removes the criminal penalties under sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act as they applied to private, consensual same-sex relations between adults; it does not by itself settle the wider equality questions Jones and other campaigners have raised, as Jones himself noted.
- Some secondary retellings attached a possible death penalty to the old laws; the Reuters and BBC reports this story relies on describe imprisonment as the penalty, and no death-penalty provision is asserted here.
What happens next: the judgment applies to Trinidad and Tobago, where the two provisions can no longer be used to prosecute private, consensual same-sex relations between adults. The Attorney General's office has yet to respond publicly. Beyond the twin-island nation, lawyers and campaigners in other Commonwealth countries that retain colonial-era bans — and that still send final appeals to the Privy Council in London — are expected to study the judgment closely, because its reasoning on privacy and sexual orientation was stated in general constitutional terms.