Federal Judge Throws Cold Water on Ripple and SEC's Latest Attempt to Settle

In a stunning turn of events, a federal judge has shot down Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's joint motion to squash the $125 million penalty and final ruling on institutional XRP sales. Both parties had reached a settlement, but Judge Analisa Torres wasn't having it.

Torres also stomped on their motion to lift the permanent injunction on Ripple's institutional XRP sales, which the court slapped on them in 2024.

The court made it crystal clear that Ripple and the SEC can't just use their settlement agreement to flip the script on the order that put a permanent kibosh on the company's institutional XRP sales.

Judge denies yet another Ripple/SEC motion

This latest Ripple/SEC motion was their second swing at the bat to try and legally wrap up this never-ending saga.

On top of the no-go on XRP sales to institutional investors, Ripple and the SEC were hoping the court would sign off on a settlement where the SEC would pocket $50 million and hand back $75 million of the $125 million civil penalty. They even asked the court to hit pause on their appeal of the final judgment until this motion played out.

Remember, back in 2023, Judge Torres dropped the bombshell that XRP sold on exchanges wasn't breaking securities laws—meaning the crypto isn't a security. But she found that those institutional sales were indeed violating securities laws, which led to the injunction and civil penalty in August 2024.

Ripple and the SEC took the ruling to appeal, and they finally reached a settlement in March 2025. But it was all riding on the judge agreeing to toss out her earlier decision.

Parties "have no authority"

Judge Torres wasn't playing ball with their latest motion, saying it didn't meet the "exceptional circumstances" needed to change or wipe out a final judgment. A similar motion they filed on June 12, 2025, asking for an "indicative ruling" also fell flat.

Their argument that the SEC had dropped similar or related crypto cases didn't fly with the court, as those other lawsuits never made it to a final ruling.

"The parties do not have the authority to agree not to be bound by a court's final judgment that a party violated an Act of Congress in such a manner that a permanent injunction and a civil penalty were necessary to prevent that party from violating the law again," the judge laid down the law.

With this ruling, Ripple and the SEC are at a crossroads: either pull their appeal or go all in and challenge the injunction.

Stuart Alderoty, Ripple's chief legal officer, said they're still figuring out their next move.

"With this, the ball is back in our court. The Court gave us two options: dismiss our appeal challenging the finding on historic institutional sales—or press forward with the appeal. Stay tuned. Either way, XRP's legal status as not a security remains unchanged," he declared on X.