The National Association of Realtors has filed a petition opposing a request by the Department of Justice that reneges on the terms of a settlement agreement that was approved by the DOJ in November 2020. NAR reports the Association has already begun to implement its terms, and therefore the DOJ is in breach of the agreement and the law.
“The DOJ action should be considered null and invalid based on legal precedent alone,” said NAR President Charlie Oppler. “The DOJ must be governed by principle, and NAR simply expects the department to live up to its commitments.”
As the NAR petition indicates, the DOJ is trying to back out of its agreed-upon obligations. “By its action, the DOJ thinks it should be free to reconsider the terms of an agreement at any time, for any reason—or no reason at all,” Oppler said. “If that view prevails, it would undermine the strong public policy in favor of upholding settlement agreements and public confidence that the government will keep its word in future cases.”
As recapped by Inman, last November, the DOJ revealed that it had filed a lawsuit against NAR alleging that its rules functioned as illegal restraints on realtor competition. As the suit became public, NAR announced that they had entered a settlement. According to NAR at the time, the settlement “fully resolved” the case and required their 1.5 million members to make a number of policy changes.
Then, this past July, the DOJ announced that it was pulling out of the settlement, sharing that the DOJ was doing so “to permit a broader investigation of NAR’s rules and conduct to proceed without restriction.”
Shortly after the DOJ announcement, NAR called the move “a complete, unprecedented breach of agreement.”
According to Inman, NAR’s new petition also reveals that the settlement ultimately came after the government agreed to stop investigating multiple NAR rules, including the Clear Cooperation Policy that bans pocket listings. The government has since hinted that the Clear Cooperation Policy could be back examined in future investigations.