The Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) that rep­re­sents the LGBTQI-plus com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to heed the ad­vice of the Court of Ap­peal jus­tices and move this coun­try away from colo­nial-era laws.

On Tues­day, two mem­bers of a three-judge pan­el over­turned a 2018 High Court rul­ing that found Sec­tions 13 and 16 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. Dur­ing the rul­ing, the judges said they just de­ter­mine the laws, they don’t make it.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day, CAISO said the judge­ment is an­oth­er sub­stan­tive set­back in their pur­suit of jus­tice for the LGBTQI-plus cit­i­zens who de­serve rights, in­clu­sion, and pro­tec­tion.

CAISO said they ful­ly sup­port Ja­son Jones’ de­ci­sion to ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil but is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to add LGBTQI-plus sta­tus, health con­di­tions, and age to the list of pro­tect­ed sta­tus­es un­der the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act.

They will con­tin­ue to lob­by for sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty to be added to the list of pro­tect­ed class­es in the con­sti­tu­tion.

Mean­while, the In­ter­na­tion­al Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion de­scribes the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion as an alarm­ing as­sault on hu­man rights. Pres­i­dent of the lo­cal arm, the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion, Rose­marie An­toine, said they look for­ward to the day when the laws can re­flect true eq­ui­ty and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion, serv­ing all our na­tion’s peo­ples in their ac­cess to fun­da­men­tal rights and pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups from harm and vi­o­lence.