Professor Tanya Monestier has taken on some of the biggest economic interests in the nation. Her work sheds light on misleading or unnecessarily complicated industry practices, tilting the scales toward fairness and transparency for the consumer.

She has raised troubling questions about Amazon, for one. In a scathing article in the Villanova Law Review, Monestier called out the retail giant for a practice called commingling—“the same goods from different sellers are stored together and then sold interchangeably,” she writes. “The theory is great, as long as these goods are truly interchangeable. All it takes, however, is for some bad actors to co-opt the commingled supply chain and those goods are no longer interchangeable.

“Some goods are real. Some are fake. Some are junk. Some are dangerous. When you order something on Amazon, you don’t know what you are going to get.”

Most recently, Monestier has raised serious objections to the billion-dollar settlement of a class-action lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Under the settlement, NAR and other defendants agreed to pay damages to home sellers who say the agents’ commission structure violated antitrust rules. The association further agreed to changes in how those commissions—which forced selling agents to advertise compensation for buyer’s agents in their listings—are handled.

But Monestier’s 136-page formal objection to a U.S. District Court judge’s approval of the settlement argues that the complainants will get a pittance in awards, and that agents can easily skirt the proposed changes in the commission structure, leaving home sellers to pay inflated commissions. She also objects to the massive attorneys’ fees in the years-long case.

“The settlement makes sense—but only on paper,” she writes. “It is an example of something concocted by lawyers without a full appreciation of how this would play out in the real world. In the real world, the implementation of the settlement has been a disaster.”

Monestier has done a lot to educate homeowners on the practices surrounding the sale of what is often an individual’s biggest asset. After the California Association of Realtors (CAR) revised its standard forms in response to the class-action lawsuit, she found that the revisions were full of complicated and inconsistent language, incomprehensible to the average home seller. Monestier compiled her own model buyer representation agreement as an alternative.

Shortly after the release of her critique, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an inquiry into the California forms. CAR then released a new version of the listing agreement that implemented many of the changes which Monestier suggested.

“I do this sort of work because I want to help people,” she says. “You shouldn’t need a law degree to understand basic contracts and transactions. Industry players have made things way too complicated—and in doing so, have completely disempowered the consumer. I hope to put some of the power back in their hands.”

[Read Monestier's recent reports and objections]

If you own a home, your deed is a detailed source of information about your property’s past. But it might include an unwelcome element: racially discriminatory language about who can own or occupy the property.

Student attorneys in the law school’s Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic have been conducting original historical research into the use of racially restrictive covenants in the deeds of many Buffalo-area homes. While the provisions can’t be enforced, they represent a troubling persistence of legally sanctioned racism.

“The use of these covenants has had widespread implications for our society,” says Associate Professor Heather Abraham, the clinic’s director. “It is one of the ways that property law has been used to separate people, and those patterns have calcified. We see the consequences on our neighborhoods today—they’re fairly easy to trace.

“Courts have recognized that there’s unique and irreparable damage when someone encounters written or published evidence that another person seeks to deny them housing because of their race or ethnicity.”

Clinic students Chris Fynn ’25 and Khalia Muir ’26 are working to bring public attention to these deed covenants. They have conducted original historical research at the Buffalo History Museum’s Research Library, which maintains a repository of copies of historic deeds.

The racial covenants typically specify that “no person of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building” on the property, with an exception carved out for “domestic workers.” Such language seems like a remnant from the Civil War era, but the students say many restrictions were written in the mid-20th century.

“Even though it’s not enforceable, we think it’s still important to highlight these covenants,” says Muir, a second-year law student. “As a society, we are working toward moving past those ideas, and we would not want the remnants or physical embodiments of such dark beliefs and outlooks to still be on the books.”

Fynn, a 2-year JD student, points out that the practice was especially evident in deeds for houses in Buffalo’s suburbs—part of a string of historical practices, including real estate redlining, that contributed to an acute degree of racial segregation in Western New York that continues today.

The New York State Legislature is considering a bill that would require deeds to be amended to remove discriminatory language before a property is sold. Michigan has adopted a similar law. As a next stage of their research, students are evaluating the language of the bill and determining how they can help to amend the law to streamline the deed-amendment process.

Homeowners can look for restrictive covenants in their own deeds. “We’re looking for individual people to take a stand with us,” Fynn says. “It’s possible to have the deed amended. We would research those avenues and communicate with individuals who find these deeds in their homes.”

“I was surprised by what we found,” Muir says. “I never really knew the history of the community at large. You can read about it but seeing the physical copy of these words, that personalized it for me.”

_____________________________________________________________

If you find a racial covenent in your deed, complete this online form that contributes to the clinic's research.