District court judge Analisa Torres has rejected the United States Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) motion to appeal its loss against Ripple Labs, the company responsible for issuing the XRP (XRP) token.
In an Oct. 3 court order, Judge Torres denied the SEC's motion, claiming that regulator failed to meet its burden to show that there were controlling questions of law or that there were substantial grounds for differences of opinion on the matter.
"The SEC’s motion for certification of interlocutory appeal is denied, and the SEC’s request for a stay is denied as moot."
Notably, the decision isn’t an outright loss for the regulator, as judge Torres scheduled a trial for April 23, 2024 to address the remaining issues on the matter.
The price of XRP surged nearly 6% immediately following the news, according to data from TradingView.
On July 13, Judge Torres ruled partially in favor of Ripple, declaring that retail sales of the XRP token did not meet the legal definition of a security. The court did find however, that Ripple had violated securities laws by selling XRP tokens directly to institutional investors.
In August, the regulator moved to appeal this decision arguing that there was “substantial ground for differences of opinion” on the laws at hand.
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Ripple Labs and the SEC but did not provide an immediate response to request for comment by Cointelegraph at the time of publication.
The SEC’s request to file an interlocutory appeal is DENIED. I’m not a lawyer but it seems the Court just told the SEC: You asked me to apply the “Howey” test, I did, and like it or not, you lost. https://t.co/0E4MS0iuRY pic.twitter.com/bkhCpum17n
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) October 4, 2023
The SEC first filed its lawsuit against Ripple, it's CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen in December 2020, prompting many exchanges to delist the XRP token to avoid potential legal concerns. Following Torres’ ruling in July, many crypto firms said they would relist the token or explore doing so in the future.
The commission has targeted a number of crypto firms in recent months over allegations of securities violations, including major cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase.
On Aug. 29, asset manager Grayscale notched a court victory against the SEC following an appeal ordering a review of its application for a spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund.
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