Real estate brokerage eXp Realty has lost another round in a sprawling Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action, with a federal judge in Washington state denying the company’s request to stay the case in early May 2026. The ruling pushes Usanovic v. eXp Realty — a certified class covering unsolicited calls placed by eXp agents over a roughly four-year period — closer to trial, and stands as a warning to any business that operates through a network of independent agents.
How the case got here
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleges that eXp agents used third-party dialing platforms — including Mojo and Vulcan7 — to place unsolicited telemarketing calls to consumers between May 2019 and September 2023. In March 2026, the court certified a class covering the period, finding common questions of fact and law sufficient to proceed as a class action.
A particularly consequential earlier ruling in the case held that eXp Realty itself could be directly liable for calls made by its agents, even though those agents are independent contractors rather than employees. That holding cracked open a defense that companies in real estate, insurance, financial services, and other agent-driven industries have long relied on: the notion that the corporate entity is insulated from the calling conduct of independent reps.
The May 2026 stay denial
In the latest ruling, the court rejected eXp’s motion to pause the case pending various procedural challenges. With the stay denied, the case proceeds toward trial — meaning eXp faces potential exposure of $500 to $1,500 per violating call across a large class. The company has already paid $26.9 million to settle an earlier TCPA matter, an indicator of the cumulative cost that can attach to companies with this kind of agent-driven outbound calling footprint.
Why this resonates beyond real estate
The legal framework that’s tightening around eXp applies to a much broader set of industries. Any company whose business model depends on individuals — independent contractors, franchisees, channel partners, MLM distributors — making outbound calls on behalf of the brand may be at similar risk. Courts are increasingly willing to look past contractual labels and examine the operational reality of the relationship: who provides the leads, who controls the technology, who sets the script, who runs the training.
For consumer-facing industries, the trend has implications for how distributed sales models should be structured going forward. Companies that delegate calling to agents but retain control over lead sourcing, dialer technology, or messaging are now operating in a legal environment that may treat them as principals for TCPA purposes — regardless of how the underlying employment relationship is documented.
The broader TCPA enforcement picture
The eXp case is one of several recent developments signaling that TCPA litigation is intensifying rather than easing in 2026. Class action filings remain elevated compared to historical norms, courts are increasingly scrutinizing consent claims and agency relationships, and plaintiffs’ counsel have grown more sophisticated about identifying corporate defendants with deeper pockets behind decentralized calling operations.
For business leaders, the takeaway is that compliance with the TCPA is no longer something that can be safely outsourced along with the calling itself. The cost of getting it wrong — measured in both settlements and ongoing legal expense — is becoming significant enough that proactive auditing of agent calling practices is now a basic risk-management discipline.
Companies that contact consumers by phone or text increasingly screen their outbound lists against databases of known TCPA plaintiffs before dialing. Services such as TCPALitigatorList.com compile numbers tied to serial filers and frequent class-action plaintiffs, and a quick pre-call check against that list can keep a business out of expensive litigation it never should have been in.
What’s next
With the stay denied, Usanovic v. eXp Realty is expected to move into pretrial proceedings on the merits. Industry observers will be watching closely — both for the outcome itself and for any further guidance the court provides on the standards for holding corporate principals liable for the calling conduct of independent agents. For companies with similar structures, the time to revisit those structures is not after the next adverse ruling, but now.
Sources
TCPAWorld reporting on stay denial (May 1, 2026); Usanovic v. eXp Realty, 2026 WL 864633 (W.D. Wash. March 30, 2026); reporting on prior $26.9M eXp TCPA settlement.