A federal judge in New York has denied Ripple Labs' motion to force the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to release records of its employees' transactions.

Ripple filed a petition on Aug. 27 asking for information about whether SEC officials bought bitcoin, ether, and its coin, which the regulator claims they sold in unregistered securities transactions. US Justice of the Peace Sarah Netburn denied the motion Tuesday.

According to the petition, Ripple has met with the SEC four times since July 8 to request “no progress” records of agency employees’ cryptocurrency transactions. Ripple’s attorneys have requested “anonymous documents reflecting prior trading authorization decisions regarding its coin, alternatively that this information be presented in aggregated form.”

Netburn wrote that "because the preclearance process does not take into account whether an asset is a security, [Ripple] has not shown that such individual trading decisions are relevant to the issues in this case." The SEC requires its employees to obtain approval before trading any securities, but did not provide internal guidance on cryptocurrency trading until January 2018.

On March 9, 2019, the SEC issued a formal order to investigate Ripple. After that, SEC employees were prohibited from trading his coin.