A High Court in Dominica has ruled that laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity between adults are unconstitutional, ending a ban rooted in British colonial legislation from the 1800s. Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence found that sections 14 and 16 of the country’s Sexual Offences Act violated constitutional rights to liberty, freedom of expression, and personal privacy.
At a glance
- High Court ruling: Justice Cenac-Phulgence struck down two sections of Dominica’s Sexual Offences Act, finding them incompatible with the country’s constitution.
- LGBTQ decriminalization: Dominica joins Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago in repealing colonial-era same-sex criminalization laws in the anglophone Caribbean.
- Constitutional rights: The court found the laws breached protections for liberty, free expression, and personal privacy — rights enshrined in Dominica’s own constitution.
One man’s case, a country’s turning point
The case was brought by an anonymous gay man living in Dominica who argued the laws had condemned him “to live in constant fear of criminal sanction for engaging in consensual sexual activity.” He also told the court that the laws incited “hateful and violent conduct” toward him and other LGBTQ people, preventing him from “living and expressing himself freely and in dignity.”
His courage in bringing the case produced a ruling that now extends protection to everyone in the country. It is a reminder that landmark legal change often begins with a single person willing to put their name — even anonymously — to a principle.
The long shadow of colonial law
The laws Dominica’s court struck down were not homegrown. According to a report by Outright International, laws criminalizing same-sex activity across English-speaking Caribbean nations were imposed by British colonial authorities in the 1800s. They outlasted colonialism itself by generations, shaping social norms and enabling state-sanctioned discrimination long after independence.
That history makes this ruling more than a legal technicality. It is a reclamation. Daryl Phillip, founder of the charity Minority Rights Dominica (MiRiDom), called the decision “a promising path toward restoring people’s dignity and safeguarding LGBTQ people’s rights to privacy, health, and freedom from torture and ill-treatment, aligning with international human rights obligations.”
A wave of change across the Caribbean
Dominica’s ruling is part of a broader regional shift. Over the past decade, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago have all repealed similar colonial-era statutes. A case is currently pending in St. Lucia.
Outright International’s executive director, Maria Sjödin, welcomed the decision: “Decriminalisation helps create an environment where LGBTQ individuals can live openly without fear of persecution, enabling them to access health care, education, and employment without facing discrimination.”
She added: “The repeal of these discriminatory laws is a victory for human rights and a significant milestone in the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ rights in the Caribbean.”
Progress, not completion
Phillip was careful to temper celebration with realism. The ruling, he noted, does not mean “that homophobia is going to stop tomorrow.” “It’s a process,” he said. Several Caribbean nations — including Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines — still criminalize same-sex relations, and legal change rarely translates immediately into social acceptance.
What the ruling does do is remove one of the most concrete tools of state-sanctioned harm. It signals to LGBTQ people in Dominica that the law is no longer their enemy — and that their dignity is, at minimum, constitutionally recognized. That is not everything. But it is not nothing, either.
Read more
For more on this story, see: BBC News
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights win at COP30: 160 million hectares recognized
- Ghana creates a new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Dominica
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