After pushing back against an antitrust lawsuit filed against it in Michigan, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has shifted its focus to a similar suit filed against the trade group in Pennsylvania.
On Monday, NAR joined with fellow defendants Pennsylvania Association of Realtors, Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors, Allyson Lysaght and Justin Porembo to file a motion to dismiss the Muhammad suit due to a failure to state a claim.
Originally filed in October by Maurice Muhammad, a broker at Progressive Realty, the suit claims that NAR, along with other Realtor associations and executives, have violated federal civil rights statutes, engaged in unlawful discriminatory practices, breached their contracts, created a monopolistic system and broken federal antitrust laws.
In his complaint, Muhammad claims that the defendants have “engaged in a pattern of discriminatory practices against minority real estate professionals.” These practices have allegedly included “selective enforcement of professional rules, inequitable application of disciplinary measures, and the exclusion of minority professionals from leadership positions.”
Despite the variety of claims Muhammad makes in his suit, according to the defendants’ motion, his complaint “does not plead any facts to support wrongdoing by any Defendant, let alone a plausible claim for relief.”
Muhammad’s claims that the defendants “discriminated against him, violated his due process rights, breached a contract, and are liable for monopolization,” are “broad conclusions” and not “facts,” the motion argues.
It goes to state that his complaint alleges “no incident or act of discrimination,” nor does it address “how the due process clauses of the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments apply to the private companies or individuals here.” Additionally, it “fails to identify any contractual provisions Defendants could have breached or what conduct breached them” and it contains “no facts supporting a theory of anticompetitive harm.”
Due to these reasons, the defendants argue that the claims should be dismissed because the complaint fails to state a claim for breach of contract or for a civil rights violation under the Sherman or Clayton acts.
