Orozco v Attorney General

Orozco v Attorney General (2016) 90 WIR 161, abbreviated Orozco v AG, and known in lay terms as the Orozco or UNIBAM case, was a leading case before the Supreme Court of Belize, which held that a long-standing buggery statute breached constitutional rights to dignity, equality before the law, freedom of expression, privacy, and non-discrimination on grounds of sex, and which declared the Act null and void to the applicable extent. The decision decriminalised consensual same-sex intercourse for the first time in 127 years of Belizean history, and established that the constitutional right to non-discrimination on grounds of sex extended to sexual orientation.

Background

Buggery was first criminalised in British Honduras by the Criminal Code Act 1888, brought into force on 15 December 1888, and providing that: "Whoever is convicted of unnatural carnal knowledge of any person, with force or without the consent of such person, shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for life, and in the discretion of the Court to flogging". This first statute, nonetheless, classified consensual buggery as a public nuisance, rather than an indictable offence. However, Ordinance Number 4 of 1944 removed the distinction, making both consensual and non-consensual same-sex intercourse an offence. The ordinance's wording was substantially retained in section 53 of the Criminal Code Act 1981 (the Criminal Code), which provided that: "Every Person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for ten years".

Caleb Orozco, then-president of the United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM), first contemplated litigation before the Supreme Court (the High Court) during a conversation with two law professors of the UWI Rights Advocacy Project, while at a 2009 conference on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. The professors hoped to lay "the groundwork for a test case [which], if successful, could encourage similar legal challenges in neighboring countries", and considered Belize an "ideal" jurisdiction, as its Constitution Act 1981 (the Constitution) "had stronger personal privacy and equality protections than [that of] other Caribbean countries".

Facts

Orozco "is a Belizean national who has faced violence, persecution and discrimination since he came out to his family when he was fifteen years of age". Orozco and UNIBAM jointly filed civil suit against the Attorney General on 24 September 2010.