NORTH CAROLINA — Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in a letter to congressional leaders opposing a federal budget provision banning states from regulating artificial intelligence for ten years. Groups representing defendants in Jackson’s ongoing algorithmic price-fixing suit lobbied on the provision.
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A bipartisan coalition of 39 attorneys general sent a May 16 letter to Congressional leaders warning a provision within the House budget reconciliation bill would strip consumers of reasonable protections from artificial intelligence. House Republicans passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” budget reconciliation bill last week, which would enact a 10-year moratorium on states enacting or enforcing any regulation on artificial intelligence.
“We’re going to see AI everywhere in the next few years, and bad actors are going to intentionally misuse it to commit crimes and scam people,” Jackson said in a release. “Our General Assembly has been taking the threat of AI seriously and has passed laws to keep our children safe from AI abuse. The federal government shouldn’t stop states from working to keep people safe.”
Jackson issued a statement earlier this month warning the amendment could prevent North Carolina prosecutors from enforcing the state’s updated sex crime laws.
Rep. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover) introduced House Bill 591 last year, which criminalized the use of AI to create and disseminate pornography, clarified North Carolina’s revenge porn statute to include AI- altered images, and created new felony offenses for sexual extortion — intentionally threatening to disclose a private image depicting explicit nudity — as a crime. It became the first North Carolina law to restrict certain uses of AI after being signed into law by former Gov. Roy Cooper last summer.
Jackson noted the federal budget bill could also prevent the state from enforcing new AI regulation laws in the future. Davis was a primary sponsor of H.B. 375, a bill introduced this year to ban the use of deceptive AI deepfakes in election communications.
Department of Justice press secretary Ben Conroy told Port City Daily the office is continuing to review the potential impacts of the provision on state law, including legal actions against real estate software firm RealPage. The company is facing lawsuits across the country — including in North Carolina — alleging its clients use its AI-sourced rent price recommendations to artificially raise housing costs. Elected officials in dozens of states and municipalities have introduced bills and ordinances to ban algorithmic price-fixing; a federal study last year estimated algorithmic price-fixing cost renters at least $3.8 billion in 2023.
“State AGs have stepped in to protect their citizens from a myriad of privacy and social media harms after witnessing, over a period of years, the fallout caused by tech companies’ implementation of new technology coupled with a woefully inadequate response,” the attorneys general wrote in the letter. “In the face of Congressional inaction on the emergence of real-world harms raised by the use of AI, states are likely to be the forum for addressing such issues.”
Before being elected as governor, former Attorney General Josh Stein announced North Carolina’s participation in a national antitrust suit against RealPage last summer. The DOJ alleges RealPage illegally and artificially raised rents by sharing its clients’ confidential information — such as nonpublic rental rates, changes in competitors’ occupancy and rates, and future apartment availability — in its AI pricing algorithm.
Jackson announced an amended complaint in January naming six of the country’s largest property management companies as co-conspirators for coordinating with each other and RealPage to raise rents. The Department of Justice settled with property manager Cortland Management in April; remaining defendants include Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone’s LivCor, Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield and Pinnacle Property Management Services, and Willow Bridge Property Company. Greystar, Willow Bridge, and Blackstone cumulatively manage thousands of Wilmington units.
RealPage disclosed it spent $70,000 providing “advice on algorithmic and counsel on algorithmic housing issues” to lawmakers in its April disclosure. As first reported by The Lever, the National Multifamily Housing Council — a trade group representing RealPage and property managers named in the DOJ suit — reported lobbying for the budget provision in its first quarter 2025 disclosures.
NMHC lobbied against Federal Trade Commission guidance targeting RealPage and rental property managers. The FTC guidance — which stated “price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing” — has since been removed. Greystar — which uses RealPage and manages over 3,000 units in the tri-county area — also lobbied on FTC issues related to housing in the first quarter of 2025.
The National Apartment Association lobbied on “issues related to artificial intelligence and other technology to housing” in its $610,000 first quarter 2025 disclosure. National Apartment Association members include RealPage, Greystar, and Brookfield, which owns the 273 unit Flats on Front complex and manages Riverlights, a master-planned community expected to have more than 3,000 units at buildout. Brookfield is named as a co-defendant in RealPage class action suits and included in three Senators’ probe of 13 corporate landlords’ use of its software in September.
The National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association cumulatively gave over $6 million in campaign contributions last year. Local Representative David Rouzer has received a career total of $21,000 from the NMHC and $19,500 from NAA.
The National Apartment Association’s chair-elect is Willow Bridge Senior Vice President Southeast division Chris Burns; Willow Bridge manages local complexes Bellingham Park, Crosswinds Apartments, and The Cordelia. According to the DOJ suit, an unnamed Willow Bridge executive said RealPage’s software is “designed to always test the top of the market whenever it feels safe to.”
Last Spring, RealPage cited Wilmington as the fastest growing renter household market in the nation. The firm found, after 25 months of rent increases above national norms, that Wilmington had one of the “best showings nationwide” for its 2022 rental rate hike of 12.4% — nearly twice the national average.
