Last Updated on October 1, 2022 by Bitfinsider

On September 29, U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres issued a decision allowing the documents written by former SEC Corporation Finance Division Director William Hinman to be made public, giving Ripple Labs a victory in its ongoing legal dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The majority of the materials concern a lecture Hinman gave in June 2018 at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit.

Ether (ETH), according to Hinman’s speech, is not a security. Though it’s too soon to know whether the terminology used in the speech will have the same impact as the firm claims, Ripple Labs views it as a key piece of evidence in the action the SEC has launched against it, alleging that sales of Ripple’s XRP violated U.S. securities laws. There is a great deal of ambiguity regarding the speech’s context and Hinman’s actions prior to it.

Judge Sarah Netburn of the District Court decided that the emails and speech drafts were not shielded by the deliberative process privilege, as the SEC had argued, and Judge Torres’ judgment rejected the SEC’s objections to the documents’ release. The materials were subsequently subject to the SEC’s assertion of attorney-client privilege, which was rejected by Netburn in July. The SEC’s challenges to Judge Torres’ judgment were dismissed.

In December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, its current CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and its former CEO Chris Larsen, alleging that the company’s cryptocurrency, XRP is a security because it was used to raise money in 2013. The case is a somewhat uncommon illustration of an SEC lawsuit that proceeds to trial, possibly setting a precedent rather than concluding in a settlement.

Ripple has pursued a number of defensive tactics after the business initially believed the case was going against it. On September 17, Ripple Labs and the SEC submitted applications to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for a summary judgment.