New York
Compass files lawsuit against Zillow over private home listings policy
Real estate brokerage company Compass has filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Compass claims that “Zillow has sought to rely on anticompetitive tactics to protect its monopoly and revenues in violation of the antitrust laws.”
Compass says that Zillow has implemented an exclusionary policy that says if a home seller and their real estate agent market their property off Zillow for more than one day, that Zillow and its allies, Redfin and eXp Realty, will ban that home from being listed on their search platforms.
“The Zillow Ban seeks to ensure that all home listings in this country are steered on to its dominant search platform so Zillow can monetize each home listing and protect its monopoly,” Compass said in the lawsuit.
Compass alleges that the ‘Zillow Ban’ was enacted to prevent rivals from competing against it and reduces homeowner choice.
“In a free and competitive market, competitors’ products and strategies should rise and fall on merit—not the whims of a monopolist gatekeeper like Zillow,” Compass said.
Compass wants an injunction that would prohibit Zillow from implementing and enforcing its ‘Zillow Ban’ and implementing and enforcing similar policies. The company also wants a trial by jury and an unspecified amount in damages.
Zillow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The housing market is always competitive, but has become more fierce of late. Last month the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in April, as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged prospective homebuyers during what’s traditionally the busiest time of the year for the housing market.
Existing home sales dropped 0.5% in April, from March, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. The sales decline marked the slowest sales pace for the month of April going back to 2009 in the wake of the U.S. housing crisis. March’s sales pace was also the slowest for that month going back to 2009.
There’s also been the issue of more sellers than homebuyers, with potential buyers skittish over high prices and mortgage rates. As of April, the U.S. housing market had nearly 34% more sellers than buyers shopping for a home, according to an analysis by Redfin.
Aside from April 2020, when the pandemic brought the economy and home sales activity to a standstill, there haven’t been this few buyers in the market for a home before, based on records that date back to 2013.
Kentucky
Clerk who denied same-sex marriage licenses in 2015 is still fighting Supreme Court’s ruling
The Kentucky county clerk who became known around the world for her opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage is still arguing in court that it should be overturned.
Kim Davis became a cultural lightning rod 10 years ago, bringing national media and conservative religious leaders to eastern Kentucky as she continued for weeks to deny the licenses. She later met Pope Francis in Rome and was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”
Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples
Davis began denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015.
Videos of a same-sex couple arguing with Davis in the clerk’s office over their denial of a license drew national attention to her office.
She defied court orders to issue the licenses until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015. Davis was released after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form.
The Kentucky Legislature later enacted a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.
Davis cited her Christian faith
Davis said her faith forbade her from what she saw as an endorsement of same-sex marriage. Faith leaders and conservative political leaders including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin rallied to her cause.
After her release from jail, Davis addressed the media, saying that issuing same-sex marriage licenses “would be conflicting with God’s definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. This would be an act of disobedience to my God.”
Davis declined a request for an interview from The Associated Press for this story.
A man who was denied a license ran for her office
In 2018, one of the men who had confronted Davis over her defiance ran for her office. David Ermold said he believed people in Rowan County were sick of Davis and wanted to move on.
When he went to file his papers for the Democratic primary, Davis, a Republican, was there in her capacity as clerk to sign him up. Sitting across a desk from each other, the cordial meeting contrasted the first time they met three years earlier.
Both candidates lost; Ermold in the primary and Davis in the general election. She has not returned to politics.
10 years later, Davis wants the Supreme Court to reconsider same-sex marriage
Davis’ lawyers are attempting again to get her case before the Supreme Court, after the high court declined to hear an appeal from her in 2020.
A federal judge has ordered Davis to pay a total of $360,000 in damages and attorney fees to Ermold and his partner.
Davis lost a bid in March to have her appeal of that ruling heard by a federal appeals court, but she will appeal again to the Supreme Court. Her attorney, Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, said the goal is affirm Davis’ constitutional rights and “overturn Obergefell.”
Missouri
An insurance firm is ordered to pay $44M in a lawsuit filed by a man freed from prison
A man won $11 million in a lawsuit against police after his conviction for killing a Missouri newspaper’s sports editor was overturned, but the city’s former insurer resisted paying most of it for almost three years. A Missouri judge this week ordered the company to pay nearly $44 million.
Most of the money would go to Ryan Ferguson, whose legal battle with Minnesota-based St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. in Missouri’s courts started in 2017, about six weeks after he won a federal lawsuit against six Columbia police officers. Ferguson was convicted in 2004 of killing Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt but was released from prison in 2013 after a state appeals court panel concluded that he hadn’t received a fair trial. Ferguson maintained his innocence.
The city insurer paid Ferguson $2.7 million almost immediately after he won his federal lawsuit, and his attorneys expected St. Paul to pay $8 million under its coverage for the officers from 2006 to 2011. But the company argued that it wasn’t on the hook because the actions leading to Ferguson’s arrest and imprisonment occurred before its coverage began.
While Ferguson sought to collect, the officers argued that St. Paul was acting in bad faith, shifting the burden to them as individuals and forcing them to face bankruptcy. Ferguson’s lawyers took up those claims, and Missouri courts concluded that St. Paul was obligated to pay $5.3 million for the time Ferguson was in prison while it covered the officers. It paid in 2020.
But the payment didn’t end the dispute, and in November, a jury concluded that St. Paul had acted in bad faith and engaged in a “vexatious refusal” to pay. Cole County Circuit Judge S. Cotton Walker upheld that finding in his order Monday as he calculated how much money the company would pay — mostly as punishment — under a Missouri law capping such punitive damages.
“It’s a way to send a message to insurance companies that if there’s coverage, they need to pay,” said Kathleen Zellner, whose firm represents Ferguson.
She added: “You can’t just pull the rug out from under people when they’ve paid the premiums.”
The company can appeal the decision. An attorney representing St. Paul did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.
Under an agreement between Ferguson and the six officers, they stand to split about $5 million of the $44 million.
The award of nearly $44 million includes $3.2 million to compensate Ferguson and the officers, another $24.2 million in punitive damages, $535,000 million for the “vexatious refusal” allegation and interest on all of the damages totaling about $16 million.
Washington
Supreme Court will hear case of Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were shaved by guards
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the appeal of a former Louisiana prison inmate whose dreadlocks were cut off by prison guards in violation of his religious beliefs.
The justices will review an appellate ruling that held that the former inmate, Damon Landor, could not sue prison officials for money damages under a federal law aimed at protecting prisoners’ religious rights.
Landor, an adherent of the Rastafari religion, even carried a copy of a ruling by the appeals court in another inmate’s case holding that cutting religious prisoners’ dreadlocks violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Landor hadn’t cut his hair in nearly two decades when he entered Louisiana’s prison system in 2020 on a five-month sentence. At his first two stops, officials respected his beliefs. But things changed when he got to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge, for the final three weeks of his term.
A prison guard took the copy of the ruling Landor carried and tossed it in the trash, according to court records. Then the warden ordered guards to cut his dreadlocks. While two guards restrained him, a third shaved his head to the scalp, the records show.
Landor sued after his release, but lower courts dismissed the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lamented Landor’s treatment but said the law doesn’t allow him to hold prison officials liable for damages.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall.
Landor’s lawyers argue that the court should be guided by its decision in 2021 allowing Muslim men to sue over their inclusion on the FBI’s no-fly list under a sister statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
President Donald Trump’s Republican administration filed a brief supporting Landor’s right to sue and urged the court to hear the case.
Louisiana asked the justices to reject the appeal, even as it acknowledged Landor’s mistreatment.
Lawyers for the state wrote that “the state has amended its prison grooming policy to ensure that nothing like petitioner’s alleged experience can occur.”
The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. Its beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Jamaican music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents.
The case is Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, 23-1197.
Compass files lawsuit against Zillow over private home listings policy
Real estate brokerage company Compass has filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Compass claims that “Zillow has sought to rely on anticompetitive tactics to protect its monopoly and revenues in violation of the antitrust laws.”
Compass says that Zillow has implemented an exclusionary policy that says if a home seller and their real estate agent market their property off Zillow for more than one day, that Zillow and its allies, Redfin and eXp Realty, will ban that home from being listed on their search platforms.
“The Zillow Ban seeks to ensure that all home listings in this country are steered on to its dominant search platform so Zillow can monetize each home listing and protect its monopoly,” Compass said in the lawsuit.
Compass alleges that the ‘Zillow Ban’ was enacted to prevent rivals from competing against it and reduces homeowner choice.
“In a free and competitive market, competitors’ products and strategies should rise and fall on merit—not the whims of a monopolist gatekeeper like Zillow,” Compass said.
Compass wants an injunction that would prohibit Zillow from implementing and enforcing its ‘Zillow Ban’ and implementing and enforcing similar policies. The company also wants a trial by jury and an unspecified amount in damages.
Zillow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The housing market is always competitive, but has become more fierce of late. Last month the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in April, as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged prospective homebuyers during what’s traditionally the busiest time of the year for the housing market.
Existing home sales dropped 0.5% in April, from March, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. The sales decline marked the slowest sales pace for the month of April going back to 2009 in the wake of the U.S. housing crisis. March’s sales pace was also the slowest for that month going back to 2009.
There’s also been the issue of more sellers than homebuyers, with potential buyers skittish over high prices and mortgage rates. As of April, the U.S. housing market had nearly 34% more sellers than buyers shopping for a home, according to an analysis by Redfin.
Aside from April 2020, when the pandemic brought the economy and home sales activity to a standstill, there haven’t been this few buyers in the market for a home before, based on records that date back to 2013.
Kentucky
Clerk who denied same-sex marriage licenses in 2015 is still fighting Supreme Court’s ruling
The Kentucky county clerk who became known around the world for her opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage is still arguing in court that it should be overturned.
Kim Davis became a cultural lightning rod 10 years ago, bringing national media and conservative religious leaders to eastern Kentucky as she continued for weeks to deny the licenses. She later met Pope Francis in Rome and was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”
Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples
Davis began denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015.
Videos of a same-sex couple arguing with Davis in the clerk’s office over their denial of a license drew national attention to her office.
She defied court orders to issue the licenses until a federal judge jailed her for contempt of court in September 2015. Davis was released after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form.
The Kentucky Legislature later enacted a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.
Davis cited her Christian faith
Davis said her faith forbade her from what she saw as an endorsement of same-sex marriage. Faith leaders and conservative political leaders including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin rallied to her cause.
After her release from jail, Davis addressed the media, saying that issuing same-sex marriage licenses “would be conflicting with God’s definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. This would be an act of disobedience to my God.”
Davis declined a request for an interview from The Associated Press for this story.
A man who was denied a license ran for her office
In 2018, one of the men who had confronted Davis over her defiance ran for her office. David Ermold said he believed people in Rowan County were sick of Davis and wanted to move on.
When he went to file his papers for the Democratic primary, Davis, a Republican, was there in her capacity as clerk to sign him up. Sitting across a desk from each other, the cordial meeting contrasted the first time they met three years earlier.
Both candidates lost; Ermold in the primary and Davis in the general election. She has not returned to politics.
10 years later, Davis wants the Supreme Court to reconsider same-sex marriage
Davis’ lawyers are attempting again to get her case before the Supreme Court, after the high court declined to hear an appeal from her in 2020.
A federal judge has ordered Davis to pay a total of $360,000 in damages and attorney fees to Ermold and his partner.
Davis lost a bid in March to have her appeal of that ruling heard by a federal appeals court, but she will appeal again to the Supreme Court. Her attorney, Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, said the goal is affirm Davis’ constitutional rights and “overturn Obergefell.”
Missouri
An insurance firm is ordered to pay $44M in a lawsuit filed by a man freed from prison
A man won $11 million in a lawsuit against police after his conviction for killing a Missouri newspaper’s sports editor was overturned, but the city’s former insurer resisted paying most of it for almost three years. A Missouri judge this week ordered the company to pay nearly $44 million.
Most of the money would go to Ryan Ferguson, whose legal battle with Minnesota-based St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. in Missouri’s courts started in 2017, about six weeks after he won a federal lawsuit against six Columbia police officers. Ferguson was convicted in 2004 of killing Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt but was released from prison in 2013 after a state appeals court panel concluded that he hadn’t received a fair trial. Ferguson maintained his innocence.
The city insurer paid Ferguson $2.7 million almost immediately after he won his federal lawsuit, and his attorneys expected St. Paul to pay $8 million under its coverage for the officers from 2006 to 2011. But the company argued that it wasn’t on the hook because the actions leading to Ferguson’s arrest and imprisonment occurred before its coverage began.
While Ferguson sought to collect, the officers argued that St. Paul was acting in bad faith, shifting the burden to them as individuals and forcing them to face bankruptcy. Ferguson’s lawyers took up those claims, and Missouri courts concluded that St. Paul was obligated to pay $5.3 million for the time Ferguson was in prison while it covered the officers. It paid in 2020.
But the payment didn’t end the dispute, and in November, a jury concluded that St. Paul had acted in bad faith and engaged in a “vexatious refusal” to pay. Cole County Circuit Judge S. Cotton Walker upheld that finding in his order Monday as he calculated how much money the company would pay — mostly as punishment — under a Missouri law capping such punitive damages.
“It’s a way to send a message to insurance companies that if there’s coverage, they need to pay,” said Kathleen Zellner, whose firm represents Ferguson.
She added: “You can’t just pull the rug out from under people when they’ve paid the premiums.”
The company can appeal the decision. An attorney representing St. Paul did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.
Under an agreement between Ferguson and the six officers, they stand to split about $5 million of the $44 million.
The award of nearly $44 million includes $3.2 million to compensate Ferguson and the officers, another $24.2 million in punitive damages, $535,000 million for the “vexatious refusal” allegation and interest on all of the damages totaling about $16 million.
Washington
Supreme Court will hear case of Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were shaved by guards
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the appeal of a former Louisiana prison inmate whose dreadlocks were cut off by prison guards in violation of his religious beliefs.
The justices will review an appellate ruling that held that the former inmate, Damon Landor, could not sue prison officials for money damages under a federal law aimed at protecting prisoners’ religious rights.
Landor, an adherent of the Rastafari religion, even carried a copy of a ruling by the appeals court in another inmate’s case holding that cutting religious prisoners’ dreadlocks violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Landor hadn’t cut his hair in nearly two decades when he entered Louisiana’s prison system in 2020 on a five-month sentence. At his first two stops, officials respected his beliefs. But things changed when he got to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge, for the final three weeks of his term.
A prison guard took the copy of the ruling Landor carried and tossed it in the trash, according to court records. Then the warden ordered guards to cut his dreadlocks. While two guards restrained him, a third shaved his head to the scalp, the records show.
Landor sued after his release, but lower courts dismissed the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lamented Landor’s treatment but said the law doesn’t allow him to hold prison officials liable for damages.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall.
Landor’s lawyers argue that the court should be guided by its decision in 2021 allowing Muslim men to sue over their inclusion on the FBI’s no-fly list under a sister statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
President Donald Trump’s Republican administration filed a brief supporting Landor’s right to sue and urged the court to hear the case.
Louisiana asked the justices to reject the appeal, even as it acknowledged Landor’s mistreatment.
Lawyers for the state wrote that “the state has amended its prison grooming policy to ensure that nothing like petitioner’s alleged experience can occur.”
The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. Its beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Jamaican music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents.
The case is Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, 23-1197.
