On March 25th, judges Nolan Bereaux and Charmaine Pemberton ruled that the 2018 decision to decriminalise homosexual acts was legally incorrect. As a result, the relevant sections of the Sexual Offences Act that prohibit these acts were reinstated. Judge Vasheist Kokaram dissented.
The Sexual Offences Act, specifically Sections 13 and 16, prohibits homosexual acts, even when they are consensual. In 2018, this ban was declared unconstitutional by Judge Devindra Rampersad, but the government appealed the decision, which led to the law's reintroduction.
Activist Jason Jones, who initiated the lawsuit against the law in 2017, expressed disappointment at the ruling. "The TT Court of Appeal has effectively put a target on the back of LGBTQIA+ people and made us lower class citizens in our own country," he wrote on social media. He described the ruling as "a setback for LGBTQIA+ people in Trinidad and Tobago."
In other Caribbean nations, such as Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados, homosexuality has been decriminalised in recent years. Legal cases against similar laws are still ongoing in Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Jones has announced that he will appeal to the Privy Council, a court for Commonwealth countries. "I hope justice will be done and these heinous discriminatory laws, a legacy of British colonialism, will be removed by the British courts," Jones said.
