Days after announcing a date for the highly anticipated appeal challenging the validity of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, Uganda’s Supreme Court has postponed the hearing.
Earlier in March, the court issued a communication setting 31 March 2026 as the date to hear the appeal against the April 2024 Constitutional Court decision that largely upheld the law.
The country’s LGBTQ+ community saw the case as an opportunity to convince the judiciary that the legislation is unconstitutional, violates fundamental rights and freedoms and fuels fear, discrimination, and intolerance.
Just four days before the scheduled hearing, the Deputy Registrar of the Supreme Court, Akullo Elizabeth Ogwal, announced that the hearing had been postponed “due to unforeseen circumstances”.
While apologising for any inconvenience caused, she said that a new date would be communicated in due course.
The court also urged the parties to continue with their filings and submissions in the meantime.
Human Rights Watch has described Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act as “one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBT laws”.
The legislation imposes life imprisonment for same-sex relations and the death penalty for so-called “aggravated” homosexuality.
It also criminalises the “promotion of homosexuality”, exposing human rights defenders and LGBTQ+ advocates to prison sentences of up to 20 years.
Since the Anti-Homosexuality Act came into force in 2023, the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF) has documented 983 cases targeting individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.
In February 2026 alone, HRAPF recorded six arrests, three cases involving violence, two evictions linked to the victims’ sexuality, and three additional incidents of violence or discrimination. In one case, two women were arrested in the northern city of Arua after neighbours alleged that they had kissed in public.
