What's Happening Right Now

Five judges in London started hearing a case on July 8, 2026, that will decide whether Trinidad and Tobago can keep a colonial-era law that makes consensual sex between men illegal. The case involves Jason Jones, who is appealing a 2025 Court of Appeal decision that reinstated the law against him. The judges are part of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — essentially the UK's Supreme Court serving as the final appeal court for several Caribbean nations The Guardian.

The Three Legal Questions

The judges have narrowed their inquiry down to three specific questions about sections 13 and 16 of Trinidad and Tobago's Sexual Offences Act from 1986.

First question: Did the 1986 law simply copy an older law from 1925, without making real changes? This matters because Trinidad and Tobago's Constitution has a "savings clause" — a rule that protects old laws passed before independence from legal challenge. If the 1986 law is just a copy-and-paste job, the old shield still applies.

Second question: Do these laws violate basic rights that the Constitution guarantees — like privacy and equal treatment?

Third question: If the laws do violate those rights, can the government justify keeping them anyway?

The first question is the crucial one. If the judges decide that the 1986 law made real changes to the old 1925 version — rather than just reproducing it word-for-word — then the old shield disappears. The government's defenses crumble, and the constitutional analysis becomes straightforward.

The Long Road Here

Jason Jones first went to court in 2017 to challenge this law. In April 2018, a High Court judge named Devindra Rampersad ruled in his favor, saying the law violated his right to privacy and equal treatment under the Constitution. Jones won. The ruling stood for seven years.

Then everything changed. In March 2025, the Court of Appeal overturned that victory. The Attorney General had appealed — and won. A second Court of Appeal decision in January 2026 basically put other related cases on hold, since this one was already heading to London JCPC.

Why This Matters Far Beyond One Law

The current law carries a punishment: up to five years in prison for consensual same-sex intimacy between men. But what makes this case significant for the entire Caribbean is not just what happens to this one law.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar explained the real stakes when she spoke to The Guardian near the start of the hearing. She said the judges' decision about the savings clause could reshape how Caribbean countries handle all their old colonial-era laws. Many of those laws were kept when these nations became independent, protected by similar savings clauses in their constitutions. If London rules that re-enacting a law counts as making a new law — rather than simply preserving an old one — that shield weakens everywhere. Caribbean governments are fighting this case hard because they worry about consequences far beyond the buggery law The Guardian.

For Jones himself, the argument is simpler. Parliament has had over a decade to repeal this law. It never did. The fact that the Attorney General chose to appeal the 2018 court victory — instead of accepting it — tells him that the government does not intend to change course on its own.

How the Caribbean Stands Now

The region's laws on this issue are fragmented. The Bahamas decriminalized same-sex conduct back in 1991. The UK changed laws in several of its territories — Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos — in 2001. Courts in other islands, including Barbados, Dominica, St Lucia, and Antigua and Barbuda, have struck down similar laws on their own. But Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Vincent and the Grenadines still have these laws on the books The Guardian.

This Privy Council ruling will not automatically force those other countries to change. But because the Privy Council serves as the highest court for several Caribbean nations, its reasoning carries heavy weight across the region. If the judges clarify how savings clauses actually work — whether they protect laws that have been reworked or consolidated since independence — other Caribbean courts will likely follow that logic.

What Comes Next

Courts around the Commonwealth Caribbean have already split on these questions. Some say a re-enacted law is still the same old law, protected by the savings clause. Others say if Parliament rewrites a law, it becomes something new. The Privy Council's ruling should finally settle which approach is correct.

A decision is expected within three to six months. Until then, the 2025 Court of Appeal's reinstatement of the law remains the legal reality in Trinidad and Tobago.