The highest appellate court has declared a constitutional boundary around private adult relationships. The statutory provisions remain the subject of a final remedial order.
A landmark ruling, but not a legislative repeal
On 10 November 2026, five judges of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council unanimously ruled in favour of Jason Jones in a constitutional challenge to provisions criminalising consensual same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago. The London-based committee is the Caribbean country’s final appellate court. Its judgment in The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones, [2026] UKPC 38, found that sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 interfere with the fundamental right to respect for private and family life. The court allowed Jones’s appeal and rejected the Attorney General’s cross-appeal.
The immediate legal message is both significant and precise: the provisions must be interpreted consistently with the Constitution so that private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex are not criminalised. That is not the same as Parliament removing the sections from the statute book. Nor had the judges settled the exact final form of their remedial order when the judgment was issued. They invited further written submissions and indicated a provisional preference for the High Court’s approach. The distinction matters to anyone trying to understand what has changed in law and what remains to be done.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones
Why two provisions were challenged
Section 13 of the 1986 Act addresses “buggery”, while section 16 addresses “serious indecency”. As the judgment explains, section 13 covered specified anal intercourse involving a man and another person; section 16 prohibited other sexual acts but created an exception for specified private, consensual activity between a man and a woman. That unequal treatment left consensual same-sex intimacy within the reach of criminal law. The judgment focused on the constitutional consequences of that reach, not on a claim that all sexual-offence protections must disappear.
Jones argued that the provisions violated rights protected by sections 4 and 5 of Trinidad and Tobago’s Constitution, particularly section 4(c), which protects respect for private and family life. The judicial analysis placed sexual orientation within the intimate sphere of personal identity, autonomy and relationships. A law does not need to produce a documented prosecution in every individual case to interfere with a person’s ability to live privately without the threat of criminal sanction. The court’s account also records the harassment and fear of arrest Jones described in his evidence.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones
How the case moved through three courts
Jones filed his constitutional claim on 23 February 2017. On 12 April 2018, High Court Justice Devindra Rampersad ruled that the challenged provisions breached constitutional rights and were not saved from review. Following a separate remedies hearing, Rampersad ordered wording changes designed to distinguish private, consensual adult activity from criminal conduct. The judgment’s account of that remedy is central to the present dispute because the Privy Council is considering whether to preserve the same solution.
On 25 March 2025, a divided Court of Appeal partly accepted the Attorney General’s argument concerning the Constitution’s protection for older laws. Judges Bereaux and Pemberton formed the majority; Justice Kokaram dissented on that issue. The appellate result did not simply reinstate the High Court’s constitutional reasoning. It substituted aspects of older legislation through its reading of the savings clause. Jones then took the remaining dispute to the Privy Council, which heard the case in July 2026 and ruled in November. This sequence explains why descriptions of the 2018 and 2025 outcomes cannot be treated as the final position.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones
Why the constitutional savings clause failed
One dispute turned on section 6 of the Constitution, which protects laws already in force when the Constitution took effect in 1976, and in some circumstances later enactments that repeal and re-enact those laws with modifications. The Attorney General argued that the 1986 offences inherited the protection attached to earlier colonial-era provisions. The Privy Council disagreed. It read the 1986 Act as a newly considered, comprehensive legislative scheme rather than a modest continuation of the earlier offences. Similarities between old and new wording did not make the whole replacement scheme immune from a rights challenge.
The second argument concerned section 13 of the Constitution. The 1986 Act had been enacted using a special parliamentary majority, a procedure that can protect some laws despite an inconsistency with fundamental rights. But that protection has an express limit: legislation must still survive the test of whether it is reasonably justifiable in a society respectful of individual rights and freedoms. The judges concluded that the challenged criminal restrictions did not meet that test. In particular, the state had not identified an adequately important objective supported by evidence that could justify the intrusion into private adult relationships.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones
What the judges did — and did not — decide
The formal conclusion is that sections 13 and 16 infringe Jones’s rights and must be read subject to the Constitution so that they do not criminalise private, consensual same-sex relations between adults. Lord Sales and Lord Burrows delivered the judgment, joined by Lord Reed, Lord Briggs and Lady Rose. The decision is unanimous. Reuters also reported the court’s emphasis on sexual orientation as a core dimension of identity and Jones’s welcome for the ruling, coupled with his warning that it leaves wider LGBTQ+ equality questions unresolved.
The precise remedial order remains outstanding. In paragraphs 85–89, the court discusses the earlier High Court modification and the possibility of further representations by the parties. Its initial view favours that restrained modification, rather than a wholesale judicial rewrite of the law. The ruling therefore does not itself announce that every provision of the 1986 Act has vanished. It also does not purport to settle every legal question about discrimination, family recognition or the protection of minors. Its holding concerns the unconstitutional criminalisation of private, consensual intimacy between adults.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones · UK court overturns Trinidad and Tobago law criminalising homosexual sex
What the decision means beyond this case
This judgment comes amid a longer Caribbean legal debate over criminal laws inherited from British colonial rule. Courts in Belize and several Eastern Caribbean jurisdictions have addressed related restrictions, as the Privy Council itself notes when surveying international and regional case law. But each case arises under its own constitutional framework. The decision in Jones governs the appeal from Trinidad and Tobago; it is not a single regional order automatically rewriting the criminal codes of neighbouring countries. Readers should distinguish the influence of a precedent from its direct legal reach.
The next procedural milestone is a final order following any further written submissions on remedy. That will clarify the wording and implementation of the constitutional adjustment. The larger public significance is already clear: the court rejected criminal punishment for consensual same-sex intimacy between adults as incompatible with the country’s fundamental rights. The careful legal description is neither that nothing changed nor that the legislature has repealed everything. A constitutional line has been drawn; the formal terms of the remedy still require completion.
Sources: Judgment: The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones [2026] UKPC 38 · Press summary: Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago v Jason Jones
