Chicagoland area listings are back on Zillow and Trulia as of Friday afternoon, after Chicago-based federal Judge John Tharp, Jr. granted in part Zillow’s preliminary injunction motion seeking to prevent Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) from suspending its listing feeds.
On Monday, Zillow filed the motion in its antitrust lawsuit against MRED and Compass International Holdings, after MRED notified it that the MLS would suspend its listing feeds unless Zillow cured what the MLS called a “material breach of its license agreements” by late Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, MRED announced that it had suspended Zillow’s listing feed. On Thursday, Zillow filed an motion for a temporary restraining order echoing its preliminary injunction motion requesting emergency relief regarding MRED’s listing feed.
According to MRED, this dispute centered on Zillow’s selective removal of nine listings that the MLS maintained were being marketed lawfully under its rules. Zillow told HousingWire that none of these nine listings are in MRED’s traditional Chicagoland service area. According to the announcement, Zillow’s stance prompted MRED to shut off a feed covering roughly 43,000 active listings, or 99.98% of the MLS’s inventory, from the portal’s consumer-facing platforms. The Illinois-based MLS said that it notified Zillow two weeks ago that selectively excluding listings from participating brokers violated Zillow’s license agreements with the MLS. MRED gave Zillow until 11:59 p.m. Central time on May 19, 2026, to fix the issue. Zillow did not do so, the MLS said.
In an emailed statement, a Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire, that the ruling on its motion was “an important first step for the Chicago home buyers, sellers and agents who have been harmed by a coordinated scheme between MRED and Compass to reduce transparency in the housing market.”
“In the middle of a housing affordability crisis, powerful industry players colluded to hide listings, suppress competition and steer consumers toward a single dominant brokerage,” the spokesperson wrote. “The court immediately recognized what was at stake, not just for Zillow, but for every person trying to find or sell a home across Illinois and beyond. We will continue to fight to ensure this anti-consumer conduct is not allowed to take root permanently.”
But while MRED must restore its listing feed to Zillow by end of day Friday, according to the ruling, in Zillow’s display of the listing feed, it must include the nine MRED listings it had previously removed from its portal as well as any listings that were in the MLS’s system as of May 21. Moving forward, the judge also ruled that Zillow may not ban listings within ZIP codes nationwide where MRED has had listings between April 2025 and April 2026.
“That is a sweeping limitation on Zillow’s ability to selectively exclude lawful listings based on its own business preferences,” a spokesperson for MRED wrote in an emailed statement. “The central issue remains unchanged: Zillow wants the benefit of receiving MLS listing data while reserving the right to discriminate against certain lawful listings, sellers, and brokers whose marketing strategies it disfavors. The court’s ruling makes clear that Zillow cannot ignore their license obligations and MRED’s reasonable rules that benefit all participants in our cooperative marketplace and undermine the value of the MLS.”
In an emailed statement, a Compass International Holdings spokesperson also said the company was pleased with the ruling.
“We are pleased that the judge said Zillow can no longer ban MRED listings and we are pleased that the judge denied the TRO against Compass. As Zillow’s own lawyer noted in court, the judges decision is a huge loss for Zillow,” the spokesperson wrote. “Agents and consumers should be asking themselves why Zillow is fighting so hard to ban listings? Because they want to control how agents and consumers can market homes. We have a problem with that and so does the court.”
Zillow spokesperson clarified that under this ruling Zillow is allowed to continue enforcing its Listing Access Standards outside of MRED’s territory and that in the motion it was not asking the court to compel Compass to change any of its behaviors or policies.
The motion was part of a larger antitrust lawsuit filed by Zillow earlier this month. In the complaint, Zillow alleges that the Chicagoland MLS and the nation’s largest brokerage conspired to withhold listing data and pressure Zillow to carry private “hidden” listings nationwide. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Chicago, accuses MRED and Compass of coordinating to threaten Zillow’s access to the Chicagoland listing feed unless the portal agreed to display Compass private listings across the United States. Zillow claims this conduct amounts to an unlawful group boycott and abuse of monopoly power under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act.