A judge has narrowed the defamation lawsuit that President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte, filed against the American commentator Candace Owens in 2025, dismissing the claims against Ms. Owens as an individual while allowing litigation against her business entities to continue. The split ruling, first reported by The New York Times, hands each side a partial victory and ensures that one of the more unusual transatlantic libel fights of the decade will grind on into a second year.

A Case That Turns on Paperwork as Much as Facts

At the center of the dispute are statements Ms. Owens made on her podcast and social media channels about Ms. Macron's gender — claims the Macrons say are false, defamatory and deeply damaging to a private individual who happens to be married to a head of state. The French president and his wife sued in the United States in 2025, seeking damages and a retraction.

The ruling does not resolve whether those statements were defamatory. Instead, it addresses a threshold question that has consumed much of the litigation so far: whether a U.S. court has the power to hear the case against Ms. Owens at all. The judge concluded that jurisdiction exists over her companies — the corporate apparatus behind her media operation — but not over Ms. Owens in her personal capacity, a distinction rooted in how her business is structured and where her commercial activity is registered and conducted.

Owens Claims Personal Vindication

Ms. Owens, who has built a large audience on platforms including YouTube and X by positioning herself as a target of establishment institutions, immediately framed the ruling as a win. According to primetimer.com, she told her followers she had been "just personally dismissed" from the lawsuit, presenting the outcome as evidence that the case against her was always political rather than legal.

"I was just personally dismissed." — Candace Owens, describing the ruling to her audience

Other coverage suggests her mood was buoyant even as the broader case survived. MSN reported that Ms. Owens gloated that she was in an "absolute best mood" despite the fact that the lawsuit remains alive against her businesses — a reminder that in the attention economy, a partial legal setback can be repackaged as a narrative asset.

The Jurisdictional Fight Is Not Over

Ms. Owens has also argued that the case should be thrown out on grounds tied to French law, including what MSN described as a French filing deadline — essentially a statute-of-limitations defense — alongside her objections to U.S. court jurisdiction. That strategy reflects a broader effort by her legal team to argue that a French public figure should pursue French remedies in French courts rather than export a libel claim to the United States, where defamation standards are considerably more protective of speakers.

The distinction matters enormously. American defamation law generally requires a plaintiff who is a public figure to prove actual malice — knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — a demanding standard. French law is far more favorable to plaintiffs alleging attacks on personal honor. Where the case is heard, in other words, may prove more consequential than any single piece of evidence.

A Conspiracy Theory With Its Own French History

The claims Ms. Owens amplified about Brigitte Macron are not new. A similar theory circulated in France around 2021, spread by fringe figures online, and eventually produced a French defamation trial in 2024 in which two women were convicted over their roles in promoting it. Ms. Macron, a former schoolteacher, has been married to Emmanuel Macron since 2007 and is the mother of three children from a prior marriage.

That history gives the current litigation an unusual dimension: the Macrons are not simply suing over a single viral remark, but over the revival of a narrative that French courts have already treated as defamatory. Their willingness to file in the United States — an expensive and uncertain venue for a foreign head of state — suggests a calculation that only American-style damages and injunctive relief can meaningfully deter its further spread in English-language media.

What Happens Next

  • The corporate claims continue: Because the case survives against Ms. Owens's business entities, discovery — including records of how her content is produced, promoted and monetized — is likely to proceed.
  • Jurisdictional appeals are probable: Ms. Owens has contested the forum at every stage and may seek appellate review of the ruling that keeps her companies in the case.
  • The French deadline defense remains live: A ruling on whether French limitation periods bar the claim could arrive before any trial on the merits.
  • The public-relations battle is already settled: Both sides are treating the procedural ruling as a substantive triumph.

The Bigger Picture

The case sits at the intersection of three trends: the globalization of defamation claims by powerful figures against independent media personalities; the rise of U.S.-style corporate structures that shield individual commentators from liability even as their content reaches millions; and the cross-border migration of conspiracy theories that once lived in a single national media ecosystem.

For the Macrons, the ruling is a mixed result — the litigation endures, but the defendant most responsible for the statements has, for now, been separated from it. For Ms. Owens, it is a usable talking point and a warning: the companies that carry her voice remain exposed, and the underlying question of whether what she said was defamatory has yet to be answered by any court.

Representatives for the Macrons and for Ms. Owens did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling's next steps.