The Daily Signal - DOJ Investigates Realtor Blacklisting: A Virginia Free Speech Showdown

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Free Speech and Free Association are the essence of the United States, and both fell under the jackboots of politically weaponized “wokeness” here in Virginia when a realtor decided he wanted to run for city council of Staunton. What happened next reads like the script for a Daniel Craig movie as agents for his opponents found a social media post from years before in which he reposted a Biblical passage, Leviticus 20:13, that had been shared with him by Franklin Graham.  Not only was the passage used to rally opposition to his run for public office, after that election was completed they shared the passage with his business association, the National Association of Realtors in an effort to have him expelled from the organization and prohibiting him access to the real estate listings he would use to help his clients find a home. Two weeks ago the National and Virginia Association of Realtors reversed their original determination against Mr. Fauber and changed their code of ethics to only regulate speech used during a realtor conducting of real estate business. Then, on Tuesday HJuly 29th Mr Fauber’s legal team from the Founding Freedoms Law Center, a division of Virginia’s Family Foundation, announced that the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the Conduct of both organizations. We sit down with Mychael Sylvester, on e of Mr. Fauber’s lawyer from the Founding Freedoms Law Center to catch up of this attempt to ruin a person’s life simply because you disagree with them. Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AFk8xjiOOBEynVg3JiN6g  The Signal Sitdown: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376 Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741 Victor Davis Hanson: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327   Follow The Daily Signal:  X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal, brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. And I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take it. Take a moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast.

You can find additional content at DailySignal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today.

We'd love to talk, business. Michael Sylvester is on with us. Michael Sylvester is a lawyer with the founding Freedom's Law Center. Michael, thank you for taking some time. But more importantly, as a friend of the plaintiff in the case, thank you for taking the case of Wilson Fobber. helping him get his ability to earn a living protected. How are you doing this morning, sir? Certainly, Joe, thanks for having me. Doing well, thanks. First and foremost, let me find out.

So the Department of Justice last week announced that they are now doing an investigation into the practices of the National Association of Realtors and the Virginia Association of Realtors. What do you know of this investigation? I know it was announced by your law firm. How much are you aware of? What are they looking at? And how big is the scope? Well, I think what we do know is that this investigation all relates to NAR's hate speech rule and its connection to religion, which is kind of a funny combination. But this is the position that NAR has placed itself in.

But I'll say to be clear, my organization doesn't know exactly what the DOJ is investigating. investigating and the breadth of it, but it all arises from this hate speech role that NAR is created. Now, I know that your case was able to get the Association of Realtors to change its standards regarding what a realtor can say as an American citizen in times when they're not interacting with potential homebuyers and home renters and things like that. That was a pretty profound victory in and of itself. So congratulations to you guys on that. Big victory. Realtors have far more freedom today because Stanton Area Realtor Wilson Fulbert took a stand. And many in your audience may know that in the wake of George Floyd in 2020,

this organization called the National Association of Realtors adopted a role that said that realtors, even in their private capacity, could not engage in something called hate speech or harassing speech against folks of LGBT persuasion. And I think while we all would understand that in the professional context, this was literally constraining how ministers may talk about issues of sexuality, et cetera, from the pulpit in their Sunday school classes or on their social media pages, as we see with Wilson Faber. So it really came out with a very chilling effect on the type of speech that we thought that we enjoyed in America. And so overly broad, it seemed that when I first saw the issue and Wilson showed it to me,

I said, how does somebody write a regulation that says no matter what time of day or night, no matter what day of week it is, if we decide, and I think you tell me if I'm wrong, Michael, a relatively ill-defined standard of what hate speech was anyway, correct? Ill-defined, indeed, not very clearly defined and largely used against religious realtors. So Wilson Fawber from Stanton would be one of its victims, if you will. Of course, he's not going down. He's fighting all the way. But there's a realtor in Montana who's been punished under this rule, and he's a minister.

And then another individual who engaged in religious speech related to the LGBT movement from Arizona who's fighting. and another realtor in Texas is in this fight. So anyway, it's been used against religious realtors. None of us want, you know, the word hate speech makes us all recoil. But we also do want ministers to be able to talk about sexuality. That's what we expect our pastors to be able to do. Well, and I think because it was so overly broad, it really opened a Pandora's box of determining what could hate speech do

and be used as Michael Sylvester from the founding Freedom's Legal Center at the Family Foundation. All across America, talk radio, and the voices of freedom. Don't stop talk. Oh, that is it. I mean, there's a reason the First Amendment is the First Amendment is the most important part of a free society is the ability to associate and to say what's on your mind. That doesn't mean you are irresponsible and you can bear responsibility for things you say

if you lie, cheat, steal, that kind of thing, commit fraud. There are laws about that. Michael Sylvester is on with us from the Family Foundation in their legal defense arm, which is the founding Freedom's Legal Center. Michael is the attorney with Wilson Faber, the Virginia realtor. And you said, Michael, before we went to break, that there are other realtors. There are other folks in other parts of the country that are also suffering under this yoke of overly broad regulation.

And it's not like the case of the baker where somebody came to them and said, hey, bake me this cake that says this and he refused. Nobody had made an accusation that Wilson had denied anyone full representation as a realtor because of their lifestyle choices. and still, you know, to this point, never have, correct? I'm so happy you pointed that out. That's right. No, Wilson Falber has an unblemished record.

He's never had any type of realtor ethics allegation brought against him until this 2020 hate speech rule was adopted. And to some individuals who've never even met Wilson decided to go after him because they wanted to troll his social media. But in his professional capacity, he's served all kinds of clients. He served folks in the LGBT community. So, no, Wilson Fawper has been nothing but an upstanding realtor. How many of these kind of private associations do you sense?

And I'm not saying it's like a legal ruling or anything. And I know lawyers tend to get away from the hypothetical. But I imagine this isn't an isolated case where a professional organization like the National Association of Realtors have these overbroad. draconian rules regarding, you know, how you behave even when you're not at work? Well, I would say that this realtor rule was definitely maybe a test case might be the way to put it. NAR really, a National Association of Realtors, got away from the norm in a significant way. And perhaps it's a greater outgrowth of the DEI movement that we've all lived through. But if you look at most lawyer ethics rules throughout the nation, the rules aren't nearly as severe.

Or if you go to the healthcare profession, those types of rules constrain professional speech in certain circumstances. But here we have an organization that pioneered into trying to control private speech. The rules specifically said that this hate speech rule applied regardless of whether you're talking in the professional setting. So they really, NAR really froliced from what was normal. But more recently, if we hadn't covered it already, NAR recognizing, I think, how erroneous their decision was, has started to pull back on that rule. So just a couple of months ago, in large part due to Wilson Fawber's publicization of this matter coming on shows like yourself, you covering it, NAR pulled back and decided to go back toward the mainstream and say, no, they should. should only control what people say in the professional setting. And a great victory for you as his representatives.

And people, you know, misquote Shakespeare all the time. I think it's a popular thing for people. Maybe it's the Mandela effect where they all say, kill all the lawyers. I'm like, you realize the guy who was doing that was trying to bring on anarchy so that he could become king. And I'm like, who was? Fun facts about Shakespeare.

But it's an important reason why lawyers need to, be available. So I want to, without burying the lead, give you a chance to talk about how people can help the founding freedoms legal center with contributions, support, that kind of thing, because heaven forbid, any of us wound up needing a lawyer to go in because the process in this, if Wilson had to pay for a lawyer for every hour that went into this case, he'd have been bankrupted just by the process, never mind the attempts to win his good name back. I was really kind of you to say that thousands and thousands of dollars would have been expended if Wilson had to retain a private firm.

But my organization is the founding freedoms law center were the legal arm of the Family Foundation, a pro-family advocacy organization in Richmond, Virginia, but we cover the Commonwealth. And anybody can learn more about what the founding freedoms law does by going to founding freedoms law.org. We're a donor-funded organization. So all the representation that's been given to Wilson Falber has been because of donations, making it possible. So anyone who wants to learn more to help the cause can go to founding freedoms law.org. Do you sense that this is getting better as each one of these cases start to add up the Colorado Baker, the football coach, all of these victories where they even tried to make the process, the punishment, years and years.

We just had the story yesterday of the McCloskey family after, I think he said, 1,800 and some number of days of legal filings and court procedures just to get their legally owned and purchased firearms back after they defended their property in St. Louis. Are we getting better at trimming back on these ways that the process is the punishment? Because I know Wilson still is facing a little bit of that process as the punishment stuff, because in an effort to bring attention to what was happening to him, he called into shows like mine, and that's still technically a violation of NAR gag order rules. Well, I think things are getting better and maybe not at the same time. So certainly everything that Wilson Falber has done, all the advocacy he's done in this matter, has been extremely helpful for so many other realtors.

They can feel far more comfortable today speaking on sensitive topics in the private setting. So that's a positive. I mean, but the negative is there's still efforts to try to suppress religious speech, that's certainly being experienced by Wilson with his realtor organization. So, Joe, you mentioned the gag rule. NAR, I believe, has really twisted the rules from the rules simply say that you're not allowed to disrupt or obstruct their ethics process. But instead, they've now interpreted that as meaning you can't even talk on a show like your own. And they've leveled a pretty severe punishment on Wilson Fulber.

So he's now going to have to deal with that and try to get them to pull back on that punishment. Legal action likely is forthcoming. So for Wilson, the battle continues. It's an uphill battle from here. We think he'll be vindicated in the end. He already has been vindicated partially, but no, the battle continues. And I also think that some of it in the last 30 seconds or so, it becomes a message to all of us. Don't you try this because this guy got.

lucky, but, you know, the chilling free speech issue has to be reminded. Be brave. Yep. And Wilson Fulber's been brave throughout this entire process. I love the phrase, sunshine is the best disinfectant. It's really hard to imagine a large, enormous organization like NAR trying to punish its members in secret. That's not how we do anything in America.

So Wilson Fulber continues to be brave. Thank you so much, Michael, for George. joining us, but also thank you for everything you've done for First Amendment Liberty, but also for Wilson specifically. It's founding freedoms law.org. I appreciate it, sir. Thanks, Joe. That'll do it for today's show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new episodes from The Daily Signal. Every weekday, you can catch top news in 10 to keep up with the day's top headlines in just 10 minutes and every weekday afternoon catch Victor Davis Hansen's thoughtful analysis for the Daily Signal. If you like what you hear on this show, would you take a

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