Caribbean court strokes down St. Lucia's anti-gay law

SAN JUAN--The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down a colonial-era law in St. Lucia that criminalized gay sex in a ruling Tuesday celebrated by activists in the largely conservative region.

The court found that the island’s so-called buggery and gross indecency laws were unconstitutional.

Raise Your Voice St. Lucia, a nonprofit organization, called it a “monumental step for human rights in the Eastern Caribbean.”

“It comes as a beacon of hope amid recent setbacks, such as disappointments in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as Trinidad and Tobago, that have tested our region’s commitment to equality,” the group said.

St. Lucia’s colonial-era law penalized gay sex with up to 10 years in prison. While the government didn’t enforce the law, activists and legal experts say it remained a threat to the island’s LGBTQ+ community.

“The mere existence of this provision is itself a violation of human rights and underpins further acts of discrimination,” according to Human Dignity Trust, a U.K.-based legal organization that helped work on the case.

In 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality filed five legal challenges against such laws in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia.

In 2022, courts in Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis struck down those laws.

Last year, a court in Dominica did the same.

“Today’s ruling is not just a win in the courts, it also represents a step towards justice for the many lives lost to violence simply for being themselves,” said Kenita Placide, the alliance’s executive director. “It signals that our Caribbean can and must be a place where all people are free and equal under the law.”

Only five Caribbean nations still penalize gay sex: Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, where an appeals court earlier this year overturned a ruling that decriminalized gay sex.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community have fled those islands following violent attacks.

The UNAIDS Caribbean office celebrated Tuesday’s ruling, as did J’Moul Francis, foreign affairs minister for Antigua and Barbuda.

“Human rights in the Eastern Caribbean continue to advance as the colonial legacies of these unconstitutional provisions continue to fall,” he wrote on X. “However, more still needs to be done across the region to ensure that progress is real, practical, and effective for LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Saint Lucia, along with Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Montserrat fall under the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. It sets legal precedents for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States of which St. Lucia is a member.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2021 issued a decision that said Jamaica must repeal its colonial-era sodomy law. The Jamaican Supreme Court in 2023 ruled against a gay man who challenged it.

A judge on St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ top court in 2024 dismissed two cases that challenged the country’s sodomy laws.

An appeals court in Trinidad and Tobago in March recriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations. Jason Jones, an LGBTQ activist from the country who currently lives in the U.K., has appealed the ruling to the Privy Council, an appellate court for British territories that can also consider cases from Commonwealth countries.

ECADE and United and Strong, a St. Lucia LGBTQ rights group, said Tuesday’s ruling is “a beacon of hope amid recent setbacks” in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago that “have tested our region’s commitment to equality.”

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