In a guest post, Elijah Granet, a Graduate Diploma in Law candidate at City, University of London, looks at an interesting case to be argued in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Does a law prohibiting same-sex marriage violate the right to manifest one’s religion or belief? This novel argument will soon be tested in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), where the Government of Bermuda will be appealing against successive decisions by the island’s first instance and appellate courts to strike down legislation which prohibited same-sex marriage.

The background

In 2017, same-sex marriage in Bermuda became legal as the result of a Supreme Court (NB: the court of first instance) ruling in Godwin and DeRoche v Registrar-General and others [2017] SC (Bda) Civ, on the basis of the island territory’s Human Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Continue reading →