At its NXT meeting in November 2025, the NAR board of directors repealed the policies that tied MLS access to membership of a REALTOR association. The headline went around the country: you no longer have to be a REALTOR to get into the MLS.
In Florida that headline arrives thirty four years late. A federal appeals court settled it here in 1991, and ever since there has been a name for brokers who use an MLS without belonging to the association: Thompson brokers.
What NAR repealed, precisely
Policy statements 7.7, 7.25 and 7.55 of the MLS policy handbook. Those were the ones describing NAR’s commitment to requiring membership and the procedure for requesting access without it. Down with them went 7.26, 7.38 and 7.92, which imposed mandatory orientation for MLS participation.
This comes from MIAMI REALTORS’ legal summary of the 2026 changes, which sets out what NXT approved. The handbook updates take effect on 1 January 2026, and each MLS then announces where its own rules land.
The sentence that sums the change up is that MLS access becomes a local decision. NAR stops setting it and each association decides. Read the other way round, that means an association can carry on requiring membership if it wants to.
Why nothing changes in Florida: the Thompson case
Fletcher Thompson was an Atlanta broker who sued his MLS for requiring REALTOR association membership as a condition of access. He argued that this violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. He lost below and appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit decided that appeal on 11 July 1991: Thompson v. Metropolitan Multi-List, Inc., 934 F.2d 1566 (11th Cir. 1991), docket No. 90-8724.
It is worth reading what the court actually did, because the case gets summarised shorter than it is. It reversed the summary judgment the district court had entered for the MLS on two of the claims, group boycott and tying, and sent the case back for further proceedings. On the third, conspiracy to monopolise, it affirmed judgment against Thompson.
And it attached a condition. It said the membership requirements "are not per se antitrust violations", that the question of market power "is a factual one", and that if market power were established on remand, the district court must find the REALTOR membership requirements to be an illegal group boycott. So the right of access is not automatic: it rests on a fact that has to be proved.
The short version, the one that circulates in the industry, comes from Florida Realtors’ legal counsel: "non-Realtor members must be given access to the MLS if the MLS has significant market power", and what the decision prevented was tying NAR membership to MLS access. That is a fair summary of the practice, and the paragraph above is what the opinion says.
The Eleventh Circuit covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Which is why that ruling changed nothing in the rest of the country and changed everything in those three states. The same counsel puts it plainly: the recent NAR changes "do not really change anything here in Florida".
What a Thompson broker is
It is the name used ever since for a broker who accesses an MLS without belonging to the association. It is not a figure in Florida law and not a licence category: it is the nickname left behind by the plaintiff’s surname.
California has its own, and it came first. There they are called Palsson brokers, after Marin County Board of Realtors, Inc. v. Palsson, decided by the California Supreme Court in 1976. So four states have worked this way for decades, and what was voted in November 2025 is that the rest get to decide for themselves.
What this does not mean
This is where to slow down, because the headline invites four misreadings and all four are expensive.
- It is not free. The ruling settled access, not price. Each MLS sets and publishes its own dues, and what you save by not being a member are the association dues, not the MLS ones.
- It is not automatic. The ruling conditions access on the MLS having significant market power. That is a legal requirement, not a box you tick on a form.
- It exempts you from nothing on the licence side. You still need your active licence and you still work under a registered broker, with everything that ties, which is covered in the independent realtor guide.
- It does not change the MLS rules. Publication, cooperation and data use rules are set by the MLS and apply the same to a member and to a Thompson broker.
And a fifth, which is more of a warning: what you genuinely stop receiving as a non-member are the association’s services, arbitration between members and the cover of the Code of Ethics. If you are about to save on dues, it is worth knowing what is inside them first.
What else changes on 1 January 2026
The same NXT package brings three Code of Ethics changes that affect anyone who is a REALTOR, plus one MLS policy point worth knowing:
- Article 7 is amended to clarify that there is no obligation to disclose the contents of a buyer-broker agreement to sellers or their brokers.
- Standard of Practice 3-4 is deleted. It required disclosing a variable rate commission, and it was tied to offers of compensation inside the MLS. With no compensation in the MLS, the standard lost its subject.
- Standard of Practice 17-4 is amended: compensation awarded in arbitration may not exceed the amount in the written buyer agreement.
- Policy 7.87 clarifies that transmitting MLS data to third party aggregators, or displaying it on public sites, is a local decision and not NAR’s.
The first two come straight out of the NAR settlement and the removal of compensation from the MLS. The third closes the circle: what can be claimed in arbitration is tied to what you signed with your buyer, not to what you hoped to earn.
What this guide cannot tell you
What your MLS will do. Access becomes a local decision and each MLS announces its own rules through 2026; MIAMI REALTORS, for one, put in writing that several of these policies are "under review". Whatever applies in your county has to be read at your MLS.
Nor what it costs. Dues are set by each MLS, they change by season and there is no statewide figure: yours is published on your own MLS site and that is where to look.
And not how that "market power" the right of access depends on gets measured. Florida Realtors’ own counsel notes that the ruling does not go into it. It is a legal question and, if your particular case turns on it, that is a conversation with an attorney rather than with a guide.
If you are starting out and what you want is the whole route, the licence requirements with the statute beside each one are in the licence guide, and what to ask before registering with a broker is in how to choose a brokerage.