The Privy Coun­cil has ruled in favour of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions em­ployed by Gov­ern­ment to man­age the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

An of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­ports that the Privy Coun­cil found that the reg­u­la­tions is­sued by the Min­istry of Health were, “ap­pro­pri­ate­ly based on sound med­ical and ex­pert sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence and made in the pub­lic in­ter­est of pro­tect­ing the life and health”, of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the Privy Coun­cil re­ject­ed ar­gu­ments of un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and in­ter­fer­ence with re­li­gious rights,” the state­ment as­sert­ed.

As such, the case brought by Do­minic Suraj and Satyanand Ma­haraj was dis­missed by the Law Lords.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice…

The Privy Coun­cil has to­day, 20th June, 2022, dis­missed the ap­peals brought by the Ap­pel­lants, Do­minic Suraj and Satyanand Ma­haraj v At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go [2022] UKPC 22. The Ap­pel­lants were chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions passed by the Gov­ern­ment to man­age the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Privy Coun­cil has unan­i­mous­ly up­held the man­age­ment of the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic since ear­ly 2020 by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Court found that the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and Guide­lines is­sued by the Min­is­ter of Health were ap­pro­pri­ate­ly based on sound med­ical and ex­pert sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence and made in the pub­lic in­ter­est of pro­tect­ing the life and health of the pop­u­la­tion of this Re­pub­lic.

This case was suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gued and won by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal pri­or to his as­sump­tion of Of­fice as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, lead­ing a Team of com­mit­ted and ex­treme­ly com­pe­tent At­tor­neys and, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank that Team and the At­tor­neys ap­pear­ing be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

The Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to man­ag­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has there­fore been con­clu­sive­ly en­dorsed by the coun­try’s high­est court of law. In par­tic­u­lar, the Privy Coun­cil re­ject­ed ar­gu­ments of un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and in­ter­fer­ence with re­li­gious rights. This rul­ing is an im­por­tant vin­di­ca­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s long stand­ing leg­isla­tive agen­da and use of leg­is­la­tion passed with­out a su­per ma­jor­i­ty. This is­sue has been the sub­ject of run­ning vo­cal com­plaints by mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion who have base­less­ly claimed that this ap­proach was con­trary to the Con­sti­tu­tion. The Privy Coun­cil has to­day de­ci­sive­ly re­ject­ed that crit­i­cism and vin­di­cat­ed both the po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and its leg­isla­tive agen­da.

This de­ci­sion fol­lows al­most im­me­di­ate­ly on the oth­er sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sion in Chan­dler v The State (No. 2) [2022] UKPC 19—de­liv­ered on the 16 May 2022—in which the Privy Coun­cil al­so up­held the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the prop­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the sav­ings law clause in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

These two de­ci­sions to­geth­er set ground-break­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al prece­dent and af­firm the cor­rect­ness of the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to leg­isla­tive draft­ing since its as­sump­tion of of­fice.