A federal judge has ordered the Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) to restore Zillow’s (NASDAQ: Z, ZG) access to its multiple listing service while also ordering Zillow to display nine Chicago-area listings from Compass (NYSE: COMP) that it blocked under its policy prohibiting private listings.
US District Judge John Tharp Jr. issued his ruling late Friday, which followed MRED’s decision to block Zillow from accessing its licensed listing data feeds for display on Zillow’s consumer-facing websites. That followed Zillow’s federal antitrust lawsuit against MRED and Compass, which claimed the companies threatened to terminate its Chicago-area listings unless Zillow agreed to display Compass’ private listings nationwide. Zillow’s policies prohibit private listings on its platforms and Judge Tharp’s ruling does not require Zillow to end its policy in other markets.
Thousands of Chicago-area home listings on the Zillow and Trulia abruptly disappeared as a result of the MRED action. Zillow sought a temporary restraining order to keep the listings visible in the Chicago-are market.
Both sides in the conflict claimed victory, with Compass Chairman and CEO Robert Reffkin hailing it as a decision that “will reverberate across the country and eliminate Zillow’s ability to ban listings.” For its part, Zillow issued a statement vowing it “will continue its fight to ensure this harmful conduct doesn’t become normalized.”
MRED issued a statement the declared, “The court made clear that Zillow cannot selectively ban listings that were included in MRED’s feed as of May 21, including the nine listings Zillow chose to exclude in the first place, the very conduct that resulted in MRED suspending Zillow’s feed access.”
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