LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Trinidad and Tobago’s law criminalising consensual sexual relations between male same-sex couples was overturned by a London court on Tuesday, after a legal challenge by a gay man who said the law breached his human rights.
Jason Jones, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, challenged the Caribbean nation’s Sexual Offences Act as breaching his fundamental rights under the country’s constitution.
He initially won his case at Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court, but that ruling was overturned, prompting Jones to go to London’s Privy Council, the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago and some other Commonwealth countries.
The Privy Council ruled that Trinidad and Tobago’s law was unconstitutional, with Judge Philip Sales saying as he announced the court’s ruling that “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.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; editing by Yoruk Bahceli)
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