Former Employee Sues National Association of Realtors, Claiming Sexual Harassment

A year after the National Association of Realtors was rocked by sexual harassment allegations against its president, a former project manager for the organization has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that several male leaders at the group’s headquarters frequently objectified her.

Roshani Sheth worked at the group’s Chicago headquarters for five years as a staff member at the Realtors Information Network, a N.A.R. subsidiary now known as Realtor.com. She said she was fired in 2019 after reporting that male supervisors had made inappropriate comments about her physical appearance and sex life, according to the lawsuit that Ms. Sheth filed against N.A.R. in a U.S. District Court in Illinois on Tuesday.

Ms. Sheth, who is Indian American, said she had also experienced racial discrimination within the trade organization. “There is no safe place for old white men,” a vice president of N.A.R. said in the workplace, according to the lawsuit.

In August 2023, The New York Times published an article outlining complaints from female employees about Kenny Parcell, then the president of N.A.R., a monolith in the real estate industry with 1.5 million members and $1 billion in assets. Mr. Parcell resigned two days after the article was published.

In subsequent weeks, other top leaders exited, as the powerful trade organization also confronted a landmark legal settlement with a group of homeowners in Missouri that forced it to upend its rules on how real estate agents around the entire country are paid.

N.A.R., founded in 1908, has long held sway over the real estate industry. It has the trademark for the word “Realtor” and tentacles, like Realtor.com, that are familiar to the public yet not always associated with the organization.