In the wake of the DC Circiuit panel's ruling that investors in the Stanford Ponzi scheme were not customers of the broker-dealer within the meaning of the Securities Investor Protection Act and that the SEC could not compel SIPC liquidation, Senator David Vitter urged the SEC to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. But it is very unlikely that the SEC will appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court. The SEC rarely if ever has appealed a ruling by a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit to the en banc DC Circuit let alone to the Supreme Court. From the Business Roundtable v. SEC case years ago to the recent ruling on the resource extraction disclosure regulation implementing Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, tha panel ruling is almost always the last word.
Also, this was a bi-partisan unanimous ruling by Judge Srinivasan (Obama appointee), Chief Judge Garland (Clinton appointee) and Senior Circuit Judge Sentelle (Reagan appointee).