A federal judge ruled in late January that the U.S. Department of Justice’s signed settlement with NAR from 2020 prevents it from investigations it had attempted into two NAR policies related to brokerage compensation: NAR’s Participation Rule and the Clear Cooperation Policy. This ends one of the two major threads of scrutiny into the industry’s compensation structure, as chronicled in the 2023 Swanepoel Trends Report chapter, “Evaluating Real Estate’s Compensation Structure and Its Future.” The thread still active are the multiple class-action lawsuits against NAR and other large brokerage firms still active that allege the industry’s compensation structure violates antitrust laws.