The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) application for review of the deliberate process privilege (DPP) ruling was refused by US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn. In a tweet, former federal prosecutor James K. Filan claims it’s a “very important win” for Ripple.
The court ordered the SEC to turn over an email containing a draft of former top SEC officer William Hinman’s controversial Ethereum speech, as well as other documents. At a seminar in San Francisco in June 2018, Hinman stated that Ether, the coin that underpins the largest network, was not a security.
The SEC stated that the DPP had protected these papers in order to keep them from being released. The judge, on the other hand, believed that the privilege did not protect the agency’s employees’ personal opinions. Furthermore, the communications were “neither pre-decisional nor deliberative,” according to the court. Ripple subsequently appealed the ruling, filing a move for reconsideration and clarification.
The SEC is unable to contradict its own viewpoint.
The judge stated in the most recent order that the Securities and Exchange Commission is attempting to “minimize”..the fact that it has distanced itself from the statement.
The SEC’s deliberations on bitcoin laws were taking place simultaneously with the address.
The plaintiff, according to the judgment, conflates communications that made up such parallel deliberations with emails and changes that simply reference them.
The court determined that the Hinman speech was not an agency communication, hence the DPP does not protect the considerations.
Simultaneously, the court has agreed that clarification will “benefit the parties.”
If some of the SEC’s communications have…
“an essential link” to agency deliberations, the SEC may withhold or redact them from publication.
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