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The jury trial for Compass’s antitrust case against Northwest Multiple Listing Service over listing display rules is now on the court’s calendar.
On Friday, June 20, Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of the U.S. District Court for Western Washington set the trial date for June 8, 2026, nearly a year from now.
Whitehead scheduled the trial for June 2026 as suggested by Compass, and over NWMLS’s objection in a June 16 joint status report that choosing a date would be “premature at this time.” The parties did agree that it was too early to ” determine the number of trial days necessary.”
Compass filed the suit in April, alleging Northwest MLS — a broker-owned MLS that Compass is itself a shareholder of — restrains consumer choice and broker competition by banning office exclusives. Office exclusives are listings that listing brokers market within their own brokerage and do not submit into the MLS for view by other real estate agents in the market. Such listings are a key component of Compass’s “3-Phased Price Discovery and Marketing Strategy” for homesellers.
NWMLS has not yet filed its motion to dismiss the case, but has argued that Compass’s office exclusives are “fundamentally unfair and perpetuate inequities that have long plagued the housing system,” and “will lead to the dismantling of the real estate marketplace for the exclusive benefit of those brokerage firms that choose to exploit them.” Compass has denied these allegations.
The parties have agreed that NWMLS will submit its motion to dismiss by June 30, 2025.
The trial date in this case was set at almost the same time that Compass filed yet another antitrust suit to defend its listing marketing strategy, against Zillow.
Read the joint status report (re-load page if document is not visible):
Read the case schedule (re-load page if document is not visible):
