Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court strikes down St. Lucia laws criminalizing gay sex

The top court in the Caribbean has struck down St. Lucia’s laws criminalizing gay sex.

The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the laws against “gross indecency” and “buggery” were unconstitutional, Reuters reports.

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The island nation’s laws, dating from when it was a European colony, prescribed a prison sentence of 10 years for same-sex relations. The government wasn’t enforcing these parts of the penal code, but “activists and legal experts say it remained a threat to the island’s LGBTQ+ community,” the Associated Press notes.

“The mere existence of this provision is itself a violation of human rights and underpins further acts of discrimination,” said a statement from the U.K.-based Human Dignity Trust, as quoted by the AP.

The Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality filed suits in 2019 seeking to strike down St. Lucia’s law as well as similar ones in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The suits have been successful in all those nations except Grenada. Dominica has also decriminalized gay sex, but in the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, an appeals court this year overturned a decriminalization ruling. Jamaica, Guyana, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines still have criminalization laws.

“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,” Kenita Placide, the alliance’s executive director, told the AP. “It signals that our Caribbean can and must be a place where all people are free and equal under the law.”

J’Moul Francis, foreign affairs minister for Antigua and Barbuda, celebrated the St. Lucia ruling with a post on X, formerly Twitter.