Meghan Markle has been given a key court date for the libel lawsuit her half sister filed accusing her of a smear campaign.

Samantha Markle sued the Duchess of Sussex over her interview with Oprah Winfrey and her Netflix documentary but lost in March 2024.

However, she appealed the ruling and will fight to breath life back into the case in a crunch hearing before a judge at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, in Atlanta Georgia, in the week commencing August 11. The date is the week after she celebrates her 44th birthday.

A court filing, seen by Newsweek, said the case was “assigned to tentative calendar number 21 in Atlanta during the week of August 11, 2025.”

Meghan is unlikely to attend in person.

Why It Matters

Samantha Markle first filed her libel lawsuit against Meghan in 2022, prompting the royal’s lawyer to say they would “give it the minimum attention necessary, which is all it deserves.”

However, the case is now into its third year and appears to have required significantly more attention than that initial statement implied.

If the appeal fails, that may finally be the end of the line for Samantha, freeing Meghan from a years long headache.

On the other hand, if Samantha succeeds in reviving the case it could prove a major headache for Meghan.

What to Know

Samantha Markle’s lawsuit has been through various different permutations over the years but in its current form relates to comments during her Oprah Winfrey interview coupled with the content of her December 2022 documentary Harry & Meghan.

Her lawyers argue a number of comments by Meghan and an interviewee on the show, when viewed together, amount to a campaign to unfairly undermine Samantha.

Meghan told Oprah she “grew up as only child” and would have liked to have siblings but Samantha and Tom Markle Jr. had already move out of their father Thomas Markle Sr’s house.

And the Netflix mini series included an episode on the trolling Meghan received on social media, which included racist posts.

Samantha’s team allege that the show guided viewers into believing Samantha had a role in orchestrating the hate campaign. They say this is an unfair characterization.

Meanwhile, Meghan’s lawyers argue many of the statements Samantha complained about are not actually about her and do not reference her, for example, Meghan told the Netflix documentary: “You are making people want to kill me. It’s not just a tabloid. It’s not just some story. You are making me scared.”

Meghan did not, however, direct her comment explicitly at her half sister and the segment related to trolling by a range of different accounts.

What People Are Saying

Peter Ticktin, Samantha’s lawyer, said in a filing seen by Newsweek: “There can be no doubt that Meghan Markle attacked her sister Samantha Markle verbally in her documentary.”

“She [Samantha] was also most certainly not part of any of the racist harassment that Meghan has unfairly suffered,” he said.

“In spite of having the actual facts in front of her, or at the very least, readily
at her disposal, Meghan chose to air this 5-minute segment, and Samantha has as a result of this 5-minute segment, suffered horrendously.”

Ticktin said that Samantha “never trolled Meghan, was never part of any hate group, never used the N-word on tweets, never monetarized any hate tweets against Meghan, or did anything to make anyone want to kill Meghan or have Meghan made nervous because of any such activity.

“Yet, with a dismissal, Meghan is permitted to walk away, as though innocent.”

Meghan’s lawyers said in their own past filing: “An implicit or express statement that [Samantha] belongs to a hate group spreading disinformation about Meghan is an opinion protected by the First Amendment.”

What Happens Next

A crunch hearing in the appeal has been listed for the week of August 11, 2025, when Samantha Markle’s legal team will attempt to convince the judge she should not have lost the case.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook page.

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