The National Association of Realtors has agreed to exclude victim statements given to the NAR Accountability Project in its subpoena of the American Real Estate Association, Inman has learned.
NAR requested information about the project in May, when it subpoenaed ARA and its co-founder, Jason Haber, in connection with an antitrust lawsuit that ARA co-founder Mauricio Umansky refiled against them in 2025. Haber rebuffed NAR’s request in a June 22 Instagram video, arguing that it was irrelevant to the suit and would put alleged harassment victims at risk.
Jason Haber | LinkedIn
“I’ll tell you quite frankly, when I read [the subpoena] I was livid that they would make such a broad request for those materials,” he told Inman on Wednesday. “I mean, you covered me back then. It’s hard to believe. Next month, it’ll be three years. The Project closed before ARA was founded, so it was so strange that ARA would be subpoenaed for documents that predated the trade group and was closed before the trade group started.”
Haber co-founded NAR Accountability Project in 2023 on the heels of sexual misconduct allegations against former NAR President Kenny Parcell. The Project ballooned from 50 members to more than a thousand within a week, with Haber hosting a rally at NAR’s Chicago headquarters that September.
Although the Project no longer exists, Haber said it made its mark — with NAR enacting three of the group’s four requests, which included retaining an independent law firm “with no prior ties with NAR, NAR Affiliates or companies that hire or contract with NAR members” to conduct a comprehensive internal investigation; the creation of a third-party human resources reporting system; and the creation of a confidential hotline for NAR employees, affiliates and individual members to report sexual harassment.
“I had very sensitive conversations with people all over the country, and my real fear was having to reveal those very private conversations, so we pushed back very strongly,” he said. “What NAR did was not appropriate. It made me very angry, and I was very happy when they narrowed the scope to eliminate it. It’s the right thing to do.”
As for the rest of the subpoena, which includes documents, contracts, invoices and all communications between ARA, thePLS.com, theNLS.com (the Spanish counterpart of PLS) and the NAR Accountability Project — minus victim statements — Haber said he’s happy to comply.
“We’re always going to comply with a subpoena. We’ll get them whatever we have,” he said.
Inman reached out to NAR for comment. They declined.
The subpoena is the latest chapter in a years-long dispute between ARA co-founder Mauricio Umansky and NAR.
ThePLS.com filed an antitrust lawsuit against NAR in 2020 after the association adopted the Clear Cooperation Policy, which at the time required Realtors to submit their listings to NAR-affiliated multiple listing services within 24 hours of publicly marketing those listings. NAR and thePLS.com previously reached an agreement to dismiss the case but left open the possibility of refiling it at a later date.
Umansky and thePLS.com revived the lawsuit in July 2025, arguing that NAR’s CCP — even with the addition of delayed-marketing exempt listings under the Multiple Listing Options for Sellers policy — remains anticompetitive.
“Through the Clear Cooperation Policy, NAR and the MLS conspirators eliminated the possibility of a more competitive future in the market for residential real estate listing network services,” the July 2025 complaint read. “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for competition in a monopolized market has been lost. NAR’s conduct has harmed competition and consumers, and is illegal.”
NAR responded to thePLS.com’s suit in September, categorically denying the network’s antitrust claims, saying that Umansky and thePLS.com have not experienced any “antitrust injury.”
The lawsuit is still working its way through US District Court for the Central District of California. A trial has been set for Sept. 27, 2027.
