candace owens swears the macrons never sued her for calling brigitte a man. a judge just made that the question the case turns on. pass the popcorn.

Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron in November 2018. Photo: www.president.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via the Delaware Superior Court's opinion, Reuters and Forbes

Candace Owens spent Tuesday night in, by her own account, "the absolute best mood." On Tuesday a Delaware judge ruled that his court has no jurisdiction over her personally, since she lives in Tennessee, and dropped her as an individual from the defamation lawsuit Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron filed in July 2025. She called the case "one of the grossest, legal overreaches by a foreign government leader in human history," and then, in the same post, said the quiet part:

"I was NEVER being sued for stating that Brigitte Macron was born a male," she wrote. "I was instead being sued for discussing MK Ultra and for allegedly accusing the 'First Lady' of theft from her sister."

Hold that thought. It is about to matter more than she lets on.

what the ruling actually did

Judge Sheldon K. Rennie's 56-page memorandum opinion dismissed Owens individually and kept the case going against her two Delaware companies, Candace Owens LLC and GeorgeTom, Inc. He refused to toss the case to another forum and refused to strike the Macrons' amended complaint. Owens' personal assets are now likely shielded if the Macrons win, Forbes noted, but the business that makes the podcast is still a defendant.

The opinion also describes what the lawsuit is about, in plain words: "Throughout the Series, Ms. Owens contended that Mrs. Macron is a biological man, that the Macrons are blood relatives," and that they abused state power to hide it. So, a little bit about that.

the gender identity clock

Here is the part Owens' fans skipped. Rennie ruled that France's statute of limitations, not Delaware's two-year one, decides whether the Macrons sued in time. Under the French press law, the opinion says, an ordinary defamation claim must be brought within three months. That window "apparently" stretches to one year "when the defamation is directed at an individual or group on account of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity."

The Macrons' lawyers raised that longer window for the first time at oral argument, according to the opinion. Owens' side countered with a French law professor, Emmanuel Dreyer, who said the one-year rule covers attacks on someone for conduct framed as shameful because of a protected trait, "rather than for a bare assertion concerning a person's biological identity." The judge also noted that when the Macrons sued over the same statements in France, they used the standard three-month rule. He deferred the decision and ordered both sides to brief exactly one question: three months, or one year. If the short deadline applies, the whole case could be dismissed, Forbes reported.

Which brings us back to Owens' victory lap. In a longer post Tuesday night she explained the stakes herself, then insisted again that the couple "is NOT and has never sued anyone for matters pertaining to sex, sexual orientation, or gender." That is a talking point, and it is also, conveniently, the shape of her best legal argument. Imagine spending two years telling the world a woman is secretly a man, and then hiring an expert to explain that it was never about gender at all.

The ruling decides nothing about whether anything Owens said is true, and it does not touch the merits. The briefs come next.