A se­nior at­tor­ney is call­ing on the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and two for­mer min­is­ters to “bow their heads in shame,” af­ter three Ap­peal Court judges ruled yes­ter­day that the for­mer gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the re-en­try pol­i­cy in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a breach of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of two women. They al­so or­dered that the women be com­pen­sat­ed for the time they were locked out.

Rae­han­na Lorick and Joanne Pan­tin were rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Denelle Singh, Jared Ja­groo and Natasha Bishram, who suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gued that tri­al Judge Bet­sy Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son erred when she ruled in favour of the State in 2022.

Lor­rick left for Cana­da on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2020, for med­ical treat­ment, while Pan­tin trav­elled to Mi­a­mi to help her daugh­ter on March 14, 2020. The bor­ders were closed on March 22 that year as the then-gov­ern­ment took ac­tion to keep the pan­dem­ic at bay. The women spent months out­side the coun­try be­fore they were al­lowed to re­turn.