The lawsuit brought by President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, against an American podcaster, Candace Owens, marks an extraordinary appearance by the president of the Fifth Republic in America’s legal system. 

Monsieur Macron, though, could have an uphill climb in his effort to hold Ms. Owens accountable for claiming his wife was born a man, and is also Mr. Macron’s father. The lawsuit, docketed at Delaware superior court, alleges that Ms. Owens pursued “a relentless year-long campaign of defamation against the Macrons.” 

In March, Ms. Owens broadcast a video titled “Is France’s First Lady a Man?” She has regularly surfaced the issue to her 4.5 million followers on YouTube. She has broadcast a multi-part series titled “Becoming Brigitte.” She is also selling merchandise related to the podcast — a T-shirt portraying Ms. Macron as Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

Ms. Owens has presented volumes of what she calls compelling evidence of the truth of her allegations — though nearly all observers consider her claims to be without merit. Undeterred, Ms. Owens calls Ms. Macron’s gender “likely the biggest scandal in political history.” The Macrons first met when the future president was 15 and Brigitte was 39, married, with children — and his teacher at Lycée La Providence, a Catholic school at Amiens.

The Macrons are suing Ms. Owens for punitive damages and for what they call “substantive economic damages” and the loss of further business opportunities. Ms. Owens calls the suit “an obvious and desperate public relations strategy.” The Macrons report urging, for the better part of a year, Ms. Owens to retract her claims. The complaint accuses Ms. Owens of making “this false statement to … gain notoriety, and make money.”

The complaint enumerates 22 counts of defamation, false light, and defamation by implication. It contends, “Every time the Macrons leave their home, they do so knowing that countless people have heard, and many believe, these vile fabrications. It is invasive, dehumanizing, and deeply unjust.” The Macrons’ lawyer, Tom Clare, notes in a statement that his clients are seeking a “substantial award.”

Mr. Clare is a longtime defamation lawyer who in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election represented Dominion Voting Systems in suits against Mayor Giuliani, the lawyer Sidney Powell, and the chief executive officer of My Pillow, Mike Lindell. The case against Mr. Giuliani, which is ongoing, is for more than $1 billion in damages. Mr. Clare has also represented the founder of WeWork, Adam Neumann, after Mr. Neumann was ejected from the company. He and his firm, Clare Locke, are the go-tos for clients pursuing high-end defamation cases.

To win their suit, though, the Macrons will have to prove a lot more than just the basic fact that Ms. Macron was born female, which could presumably be resolved by a simple medical examination. The Macrons must clear the high bar of American defamation law — notwithstanding Ms. Owens’s contention that the Macrons are “blood relatives committing incest” and that Mr. Macron was elected via a “mind-control” experiment spearheaded by the CIA. 

The Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. V. Sullivan, held that for a plaintiff who is a public figure to land a verdict for defamation, he or she has to prove “actual malice.” That means that the defendant knowingly lied with respect to the claims at issue or acted with a “reckless disregard” for the truth of those claims. This means that the burden rests on the Macrons to prove that Ms. Owens either does not believe her own statements about Mrs. Macron or that she was exceedingly reckless.

The complaint contends that Ms. Owens omitted information proving that Mrs. Macron was born a woman “precisely because it contradicted the preconceived narrative she intended to tell.  This omission was deliberate and is evidence of actual malice.” The Macrons argue that Ms. Owens’s “refusal to engage with contradictory facts and her deliberate elevation of fabrications over truth demonstrate a reckless disregard for the truth.”

There is no guarantee, though, that a judge — or the jury that the Macrons have requested — will agree with the position of France’s first couple that “Owens’ repetition, promotion, and endorsement of an inherently improbable conspiracy theory is evidence of actual malice.” The high court held in Sullivan that “Factual error, content defamatory of official reputation, or both, are insufficient to warrant an award of damages for false statements.”

One defendant who has failed to surmount Sullivan is Governor Palin. The former leader of Alaska first sued the New York Times in 2017 after the Gray Lady published an editorial suggesting that some of her campaign materials incited the deadly shooting that wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed six people. Ms. Palin testified that the Times “kicked the oomph” out of her, and the Times acknowledged its error. Yet a jury in April took two hours to find the Times not liable for defamation. 

That was the second time a jury found for the Times. In 2022, both the presiding judge, Jed Rakoff, and the jury concluded that Ms. Palin had not met the bar for “actual malice.” That Second United States Appeals Circuit, though, ruled that Judge Rakoff’s behavior at trial compromised the verdict, and ordered the case retried. Judge Rakoff presided over the second edition of the trial, as well.

President Trump has been considerably more successful in defamation suits, settling one against ABC News for $15 million and another against CBS News for $16 million. Neither of those, though, ever went before a jury, and the parent companies of both news operations had billions of dollars worth of reasons not to be cross Mr. Trump. 

Ms. Owens, it seems, has less to fear from alienating the Macrons, who married in 2007, 10 years before Mr. Macron ascended to the presidency of France. They do not have children together. In May, cameras caught the Macrons engaged in what appeared to be a spat on board an airplane. Mr. Macron described it as “joking around.” 

In another defamation case to watch, the Tesla founder, Elon Musk, is locked in a wide-ranging legal battle against a liberal group, Media Matters. The world’s richest man has brought suit in Texas, Ireland, and Singapore in what Media Matters calls “a vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism.”