Strategic Litigation as a Transformative Tool for Advancing AI Activism in the Global South: Lessons from the Commonwealth Caribbean

On June 10, 2026, the ACLU and ACLU of Florida filed a wrongful arrest suit on behalf of Robert Dillon, an African American man wrongfully arrested by police officers who relied indiscriminately on a misidentification, or “false positive,” produced by Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs). Nowhere has the unregulated deployment of FRTs and their facilitation of discriminatory surveillance and arbitrary racialized policing generated more activist concern than in the United States (the US), where the unregulated deployment of high-risk AI systems such as FRTs by police officers has precipitated the wrongful arrest and detention of African Americans in at least several instances. In the past few years, this unfortunate state of affairs has catalysed a wave of strategic litigation cases challenging the legitimacy of unregulated FRT deployment by law enforcement agencies in the US.

Given the stated intentions of the Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions of Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas to eventually deploy FRTs as crime-fighting tools, similar concerns about FRTs are arriving in the region. Against that backdrop, strategic litigation — capitalizing on existing constitutional guarantees — is poised to become a transformative tool for advancing AI activism in the Commonwealth Caribbean as well as in other jurisdictions of the Global South.

In contemporary times, human rights activists, lawyers, and civil society leaders across the Commonwealth Caribbean have successfully leveraged strategic litigation — i.e. “a tool used to drive social, legal or political change beyond individual cases” — to secure constitutional rights in the face of socio-political barriers. That success, in turn, offers valuable lessons for advancing AI activism in the Global South — especially in jurisdictions where dedicated AI governance regimes do not yet exist, and where tensions will likely arise between corporate and governmental interests championing AI adoption for economic or political gain and activists concerned with the protection of constitutional rights in the age of AI.

What Strategic Litigation Has Won in the Commonwealth Caribbean — Securing Constitutional Rights in the Face of Socio-Political Barriers

As I have observed, strategic litigation “has catalysed tectonic shifts within the regional human rights landscape” across the Commonwealth Caribbean. In particular, it has facilitated the judicial invalidation of colonial-era laws that violated the constitutional rights of sexual minorities in at least six Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions — including Belize in 2016, Antigua and Barbuda in 2022, Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2022, Barbados in 2023, Dominica in 2024, and Saint Lucia in 2025. The decision of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (the ECSC) in Randall Theodule & Ors v The Attorney General of Saint Lucia [2025] ECSC J0729-1 is the most recent exemplification of the value of strategic litigation in, as I have argued elsewhere, affirming the constitutional rights and belonging of sexual minorities.

Those judicial interventions are particularly significant in circumstances where regional legislatures have been unwilling to repeal rights infringing colonial-era laws due to deeply held fears of losing the popular vote in a region polarized by interminable homophobia and religious conservatism. Notwithstanding these socio-political barriers, strategic litigation has, as I have observed elsewhere, proved valuable in propelling a “Commonwealth Caribbean renaissance concerned with dismantling colonial-era criminal laws legitimising and perpetuating discrimination against sexual minorities”. In a similar vein, strategic litigation has also advanced reproductive justice in Dominica where on July 23, 2026, the ECSC adjudged a colonial-era law criminalizing abortion to be unreasonably restrictive and declared abortion to be legal in cases of “…rape, incest, severe foetal anomaly, and to protect the health of the woman”.

Lessons from the Commonwealth Caribbean for Advancing AI Activism in the Global South Through Strategic Litigation

The Commonwealth Caribbean experience with leveraging strategic litigation to advance human rights activism provides three seminal and transferable lessons for advancing AI activism in the Global South through strategic litigation. They are highlighted and discussed below:

1. Consulting widely with the affected groups and other key stakeholders, including specialist lawyers, prior to as well as in ultimately mounting a strategic litigation challenge is of paramount importance. Within the context of AI activism, consulting widely with the affected groups and key stakeholders such as lawyers with specialist knowledge of AI systems and their interaction with constitutional rights is especially important given the technical nature of litigation at that intersection. With respect to historically marginalized and vulnerable groups such as people of colour, women, and children — who are misidentified at significantly higher rates by FRTs due to algorithmic biases — adopting a consultative and collaborative approach to strategic litigation will be indispensable to ensuring that their voices are adequately represented and affirmed in the quest for systemic change.

2. Whilst holding tremendous promise as a reformative mechanism for promoting certain social justice objectives, strategic litigation is not a substitute for much needed political action. Instead, it should be understood as “…a political tool that, when used strategically, can stimulate meaningful change and complement other political efforts…” Appreciating this critical distinction is of the utmost importance given the necessity of championing, alongside any litigation process, advocacy efforts aimed at establishing more exacting standards of accountability for state and non-state actors deploying high-risk AI systems in sensitive contexts. This is especially pertinent in a context where, according to AI activists and algorithmic safety watchdogs, automation biases held by law enforcement officials remain a major driver of wrongful arrests.

3. In the aftermath of initiating strategic litigation cases aimed at advancing AI activism and protecting constitutional rights from algorithmic infringement, AI activists must continue to educate affected communities, the public and other key stakeholders about their constitutional rights, why strategic litigation wins (or losses) matter and how they can be leveraged to promote lasting societal change beyond the courtroom. In the maturing constitutional democracies of the Global South, an informed, engaged, and vigilant citizenry will play an exceptionally important role in securing the sustained implementation of judicial decisions by state actors. Indeed, since strategic litigation is “a crucial means — but never an end — in the ongoing quest for social justice”, AI watchdogs and activists must utilize education and sensitization to galvanize public action against excessive algorithmic overreach, surveillance, and arbitrary racialized policing.

Cite this Article: Quest, A. J. D. (2026). Strategic Litigation as a Transformative Tool for Advancing AI Activism in the Global South: Lessons from the Commonwealth Caribbean. In R. Butalid & C. Wright (Eds.), The State of AI Ethics Report (Volume 8) Power, Fracture, Resistance. pp.64-66. Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23666309. Available at: https://montrealethics.ai/saier-vol-8-landing/.